NAPO Press Release  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: JODY COUSER
January 8, 1999
(202) 842-3560

January 8, 1999

NAPO FILES AMICUS CURIAE BRIEF WITH U.S. SUPREME COURT

JOHN H. ALDEN ET AL. V. STATE OF MAINE

WASHINGTON, DC - On January 6, 1999, the National Association of Police Organizations, Inc. (NAPO) submitted a "friend of the court" or amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of state law enforcement officers in the case of John H. Alden et al. Vs. State of Maine. NAPO is a national non-profit organization, representing 4,000 police unions and associations with 250,000 sworn state and local law enforcement officers in the United States.

The brief was filed in support of 64 Maine parole and probation officers. NAPO seeks to reverse the judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, which had affirmed the trial court’s dismissal on sovereign immunity grounds of the claims by these officers, who allege that the State of Maine violated their rights to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standard Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq.

"Incredibly, a state government is violating federal law protecting public workers, and Maine’s courts are acquiescing in those violations," said Robert T. Scully, NAPO’s executive director. "The trial court’s dismissal of these officers’ legitimate claims was not based on the merits of their claims--no trial was ever held--but simply on the court’s approval of the State’s assertions of sovereign immunity to keep from being sued in state court. This was done in order to keep from having to pay these officers what is owed them under federal law," continued Scully. "This case will establish whether state governments may disregard the supremacy of federal law under the Constitution, by asserting sovereign immunity to disregard and ignore the requirements of the FLSA concerning overtime pay and minimum wages, as applied to public employees," said Scully.

NAPO’S INTEREST IN THIS CASE

NAPO’s members, including the Connecticut State Troopers, the Minnesota State Troopers, and the New York State Troopers, among other state employees, have a significant interest in the important issues of law before the Supreme Court and the impact of the Court’s decision on law enforcement officers. First, § 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) obligates the States to compensate covered employees at premium rates for hours worked in excess of the applicable statutory threshold or, alternatively, allows the States to provide compensatory time under certain circumstances (with limitations as to maximum number of hours). 29 U.S.C. §207. Law enforcement employees are entitled to overtime pay under the special provisions that apply to such employees. 29 U.S.C. § 207(k). To ensure compliance, FLSA § 16(b) authorizes employee suits for monetary relief "against any employer (including a public agency) in any ... State court of competent jurisdiction." 29 U.S.C. §216(b). NAPO seeks to assure that State employees have a remedy to enforce their rights.

In view of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 116 S.Ct. 1114 (1996), state courts are now the only judicial forum available to state employees under the FLSA to bring actions to recover unpaid overtime compensation or minimum wages. If the decision of Maine’s highest court is not reversed (which has been followed by the States of New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin), state employees throughout the United States, including law enforcement officers, will effectively be denied any remedy to vindicate their rights under the FLSA or any other Federal statute enacted pursuant to Congress’s Article I powers. If that happens, the States will be able to nullify enforcement of federal laws.

BACKGROUND STATEMENT OF THE CASE

In December 1992, John Alden and sixty-four Maine parole and probation officers filed suit in U.S. district court against the State of Maine to recover overtime pay to which they were entitled under the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. §201, et seq. The district court sustained their claim that they were "law enforcement" employees entitled to overtime pay. (See Mills v. Maine, 853 F.Supp. 551, 552 (D. Me. 1994); 889 F.Supp. 3 (D.Me. 1993)).

While this action was pending and before an award of any monetary relief, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Seminole Tribe, which barred federal courts under the Eleventh Amendment from hearing claims against the States arising under laws passed pursuant to Congress’s Article I powers, which covers most federal statutes, unless the States sued waived sovereign immunity. Accordingly, the district court then dismissed the Petitioner officers’ federal court action. This decision was affirmed on appeal. Mills v. State of Maine, 118 F.3d 37 (1^st Cir. 1997).

Thereafter, in August 1996, the Petitioner officers filed this action in a state superior court, again alleging that the State of Maine had violated the FLSA overtime provisions. That court dismissed the officers’ claim after the State invoked sovereign immunity. The officers appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. That court, by a 4-2 panel vote, affirmed the superior court. It held that the Eleventh Amendment embodies state sovereign immunity and applies beyond the Amendment’s literal terms to bar federal claims brought in state court, when those claims would be barred if brought in federal court. It ruled that Congress does not have the necessary power under the Constitution to subject the States to the overtime provisions of the FLSA in federal or state court. The Supreme Judicial Court also rejected the officers’ contention that Maine discriminated against federal causes of action, in view of State statutes in which the State has made itself amenable to suit in the area of state employee wage claims; it ruled that no Maine statute authorized the precise state employee statutory cause of action stated in the officers’ FLSA complaint. The U.S. Supreme Court granted review on September 29, 1998.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT IN NAPO’S AMICUS BRIEF

First, under the FLSA, as upheld in 1985 by the Supreme Court in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, some of Maine’s sovereign power has been divested from it through the extension of the FLSA protections to state employees and the authority to enforce those rights through an action in state court. Yet, the Maine court has effectively immunized its state agencies from FLSA claims, accomplishing indirectly what the San Antonio Metropolitan District Authority sought but failed to achieve in Garcia, that is, an exemption from FLSA coverage. In effect, the Maine court has nullified Congress’s constitutional authority under Article I to enact enforcement legislation that provides public employees with a remedy for violations of law. Because Garcia ruled that state sovereignty is not adversely infringed upon by the application of the FLSA provisions, the State of Maine cannot validly invoke sovereign immunity and deny its own employees a forum for a federal cause of action under the FLSA.

By holding that state sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment protects the state from FLSA causes of action in its own courts, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court has violated the spirit of Garcia, has unjustifiably elevated the Eleventh Amendment over the Tenth Amendment on state sovereignty grounds, and has left the Petitioners and other state employees without a private right of action to enforce a constitutionally valid federal law in any forum.

Second, the Eleventh Amendment does not apply to the jurisdiction of state courts to hear claims under federal law against state governments, as the Supreme Court ruled in Hilton v. South Carolina Pub. Ry. Comm’n in 1991. As interpreted in Seminole Tribe, the Eleventh Amendment addresses the susceptibility of a state government to private suit in federal court, not the general immunity of a state from suit in state court, and therefore the rationale of Seminole Tribe does not apply. Thus, Maine’s expansion of the Eleventh Amendment’s jurisdictional reach beyond Article III federal courts must fail.

In order to protect the State’s treasury in this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine has relied upon a faulty argument concerning the need for symmetry between federal and state courts, namely that Congress cannot force the states to defend in their own courts the same claims that cannot be heard in federal courts. To the contrary, applying the principle concerning symmetry set forth in Hilton, symmetry is not an imperative that must override just expectations by public employees as to their federal rights to overtime pay and a minimum wage and the predictability of receiving such compensation.

Third, it is the Supremacy Clause, not the Eleventh Amendment, which provides the crucial guidance for determining whether or not a federal cause of action can be heard in a state court. In Howlett v. Rose, a 1990 case, the Supreme Court stated the general principle that Federal law, as the "Supreme Law of the Land", is enforceable in state courts. The only exception to this general rule is if the State has a neutral or valid excuse to refuse to hear the case, which does not substantially curtail the right.

Sovereign immunity is not considered a neutral and valid excuse for refusing to hear a federal claim. Where a State court apparently evades federal law and discriminates against federal causes of action, on the basis of sovereign immunity, but has waived sovereign immunity to allow state claims by similarly situated plaintiffs to be heard against state government agencies, it violates the Supremacy Clause. Maine has enacted several laws conferring on state employees the right to bring actions to recover damages from the State, thus waiving Maine’s common-law judicial doctrine of sovereign immunity. Thus, Maine’s selective application of sovereign immunity to discriminate against federal claims is prohibited under the Supremacy Clause. In addition, Maine’s invocation of sovereign immunity for the purpose of not paying the funds owed to its employees under FLSA has the effect of nullifying the FLSA remedy available to those workers, because state court is the only realistic forum now available for affected employees to vindicate that right. Thus, in this case, the nullification by Maine’s courts of the enforcement of FLSA’s overtime protections by State of Maine employees directly violates the Supremacy Clause.

Maine’s action violates the Supremacy Clause in another way. The Maine Superior Court’s dismissal of Petitioners’ FLSA claims stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of the Congress (a principle of preemption enunciated in 1941 by the Supreme Court in Hines v. Davidowitz) specifically, in this case, the enactment of the FLSA protections and remedies and their extension to public workers. Therefore, the Maine court’s action is preempted by the Supremacy Clause, because it thwarts or conflicts with the FLSA and its enforcement.

The State of Maine’s interest in this case, the reason for invoking sovereign immunity, is to not pay out additional funds from its treasury to its workers, reserving those funds for other purposes. On the other hand, it is the objective of the FLSA’s overtime provisions to require that public agencies, as well as most private employers, pay their employees an overtime wage if they work over a certain number of hours. Following the principles enunciated by the Supreme Court in 1979 and 1981, in Hisquierdo v. Hisquierdo, and McCarty v. McCarty, the recognition of Maine’s sovereign immunity threatens grave harm to the clear and substantial federal interests set forth in the FLSA. And the consequence of Maine’s effort to not pay additional wages sufficiently injures the objectives of the FLSA, so as to require nonrecognition by the Supreme Court. Affirming the Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court’s decision would elevate the State of Maine’s interests over the federal interests, which would be a clear abrogation of the Supremacy Clause in the name of state sovereignty. NAPO’s brief concluded that Maine’s common law doctrine of sovereign immunity is preempted under the Supremacy Clause.

Fourth, affirming the decision of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court would send a signal to other States that they are free to refuse to hear private enforcement actions against state governments under the FLSA and are therefore able to nullify Congress's extension of the FLSA coverage to all public employees. Allowing some States to effectively bar FLSA lawsuits by their employees, in order to escape the FLSA wage and overtime provisions, while other States allow such lawsuits, could have far-reaching and undesirable consequences. It would create disparate enforcement among the States, with individuals in those States invoking sovereign immunity facing an insurmountable obstacle in vindicating their Federal statutory rights. Significantly, other federal laws applicable to the States could be negatively impacted if the Supreme Court does not reverse the Maine court’s decision. It is inconceivable that the uniformity of federal law and its application as the supreme law could long survive if the lower court's decision is allowed to stand.

For all of the above reasons, Maine state employees have a constitutional congressionally enacted right, under the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. ' 216 (b), to bring a cause of action against the State of Maine in state court, and Maine’s refusal to entertain those actions must be invalidated as unconstitutional.

The National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) is a coalition of police unions and associations from across the United States that serves in Washington, DC to advance the interests of America’s law enforcement officers through legislative and legal advocacy, political action and education. Founded in 1978, NAPO now represents more than 4,000 police unions and associations, 250,000 sworn law enforcement officers, 3,000 retired officers and more than 100,000 citizens who share a common dedication to fair and effective crime control and law enforcement.

 

[back]