Conference Call: Actors Union Asks Court to Take Race Case

UPDATE: 2:35 pm Tuesday, May 13

The blog has learned that the petition featured below in No. 07-1024, Screen Actors Guild v. Metoyer, has been withdrawn following the settlement of the case.

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The following column, featuring a selected petition up for consideration at the Justices’ private conference on May 8, appears in today’s edition of Legal Times (available to subscribers here). To see the full list of “petitions to watch” for Thursday’s conference, click here.

From movie scripts to Academy Award speeches, Hollywood often portrays itself on the forefront of race relations in this country. For years, however, the Screen Actors Guild—the labor union representing the bulk of film and television performers—has itself faced numerous racial discrimination suits from its own employees.

On May 15, the Supreme Court will consider whether to accept a case involving particularly unsavory allegations against the guild, stemming from the firing of its former director of affirmative action. At issue is whether employers may assert a so-called “mixed-motive defense” to discrimination charges under 42 U.S.C. 1981, a post-Civil War statute enacted to ensure black citizens enjoyed the same contract rights as whites.

In November, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held that employers sued for race discrimination under the law could not avoid trial simply by showing the action in question was also based on a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason. The guild—which represents some 120,000 actors—appealed the decision, and the justices are expected to announce on May 19 whether they will hear the case. (The petition is No. 07-1024, Screen Actors Guild v. Metoyer.)

The suit in question was filed by Dr. Patricia Ann Metoyer, whom the guild hired in April 1998 to oversee affirmative action efforts on film sets nationwide. Upon starting the job, however, Metoyer reportedly began receiving complaints of discrimination from the guild’s own minority employees.

After relaying the complaints to her superiors, Metoyer, who is black, alleged members of senior management responded with further racist comments. Linda Shick, then the human relations manager, reportedly said she kept black employees in low-paying jobs because they “like to party and eat and don’t do their work.”

Leonard Chassman, the guild’s former Hollywood director, allegedly called black employees “lazy and malingerers.” In 2000, Metoyer also accused Shick of overstating the number of minority employees in reports to federal employment officials and threatened to reveal her findings to the national board at the next annual meeting in April 2001.

Meanwhile, Metoyer herself began to come under suspicion after employees reported suspicious use of grant money earmarked for affirmative action projects. After arranging an outside audit, guild management accused Metoyer of fabricating invoices and authorizing some $60,000 in guild funds for events that had not occurred, for services they could not confirm were rendered, and for payments to her husband’s production company and an alleged business partner. Metoyer was immediately suspended in March 2001 and fired two months later.

Rather than bring suit for employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Metoyer sued under Section 1981, a Reconstruction-era provision guaranteeing all persons the same right to “make and enforce contracts . . . as is enjoyed by white citizens.” In response, the guild asserted Metoyer would have been fired regardless of her race.

In May 2004, Judge John Walter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California agreed, granting the guild summary judgment on all counts. But a split 9th Circuit panel reversed, finding Metoyer had raised triable issues of fact as to whether the she was targeted for auditing because of her race, and whether her suspension and eventual firing occurred in retaliation for her intent to reveal racial discrimination within union management.

The panel further held that, as in Title VII claims, an employer could never avoid trial under Section 1981 simply by showing it also acted for nondiscriminatory reasons. As Judge Dorothy Nelson noted in the majority opinion, courts generally employ the same standards in analyzing Title VII and Section 1981 claims, and, in response to the Supreme Court’s 1989 decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, Congress amended Title VII to prevent employers from escaping liability under a mixed-motive defense.

The guild’s petition for certiorari contends the decision below lacks any basis in the statute and could make even patently justified firings subject to litigation so long as the plaintiff can assert a claim of race discrimination.

According to the petition, filed by Jonathan Hacker of O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C., Congress made no comparable change to Section 1981 when it enacted the mixed-motive amendment to Title VII. Indeed, Hacker contends, the very text of Section 1981 itself establishes a mixed-motive defense. By guaranteeing to all persons the same contract rights enjoyed by “white citizens,” the petition maintains that Section 1981 does not target employers making the same decision regardless of the worker’s race.

On Metoyer’s retaliation claim under Section 1981, Hacker asks the Court to hold that aspect of the petition pending resolution of CBOCS West Inc. v. Humphries, a case argued in February.

Opposing certiorari, Metoyer’s brief—filed by Dan Stormer of Hadsell Stormer Keeny Richardson & Renick in Pasadena, Calif.—repeats many of the unpleasant allegations from the complaint, and notes the case is slated for trial in early July. In addition to disputing the underlying accusations against Metoyer, Stormer also asserts she was the first employee to be audited in the guild’s history, and maintains a subsequent interrogation by the outside auditors (from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, incidentally) violated guild protocol, under which a grant administrator was supposed to initially contact Metoyer with any questions.

On the merits, Stormer asserts that prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1991 no court had ever found a mixed-motive defense to completely bar liability under Section 1981. And since the Price Waterhouse decision only applied to Title VII, “there was no need for Congress to amend 1981 to eliminate a defense that was never available.” — Ben Winograd

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