UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 97-41493
AGUSTINA TREVINO, HERMINIA HERRERA,
BEATRIZ OLIVAREZ AND GLORIA GUAJARDO,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
versus
LEVI STRAUSS & CO.,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas
December 7, 1999
Before EMILIO M. GARZA and PARKER, Circuit Judges, and COBB,
District Judge.1
ROBERT M. PARKER, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiffs appeal the district court's denial of their
motion to remand. Because plaintiffs' claim for retaliatory
discharge is not pre-empted by federal law and because 28 U.S.C.
§ 1445(c) (1994) precludes removal of claims arising under the
workers' compensation laws of any state, we find that the
district court erred in denying plaintiffs' motion to remand.
REVERSED.
I. FACTUAL HISTORY AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW.
1
District Judge of the Eastern District of Texas, sitting
by designation.
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Plaintiffs2 complaint alleges that they were discharged for
exercising their rights under the Texas Workers' Compensation
Act. Defendant counters that plaintiffs were discharged in
accordance with policies outlined in its Collective-Bargaining
Agreement (“CBA”) with plaintiffs' union. Plaintiffs' original
complaint asserted claims for intentional infliction of emotional
distress3 and retaliatory discharge. The defendant removed the
case to federal court. The district court denied plaintiffs'
motion to remand because “[a]t the critical time of removal,
plaintiffs' state court petition asserted at least one claim
[intentional infliction of emotional distress] that was
completely preempted by federal law and thus the entire case was
properly removable.”
Defendant subsequently filed motions for summary judgment
based on the merits of plaintiffs' claims. The district court
granted defendant's motions and dismissed plaintiffs' claims with
prejudice because of a lack of evidence of a causal connection
between plaintiffs' terminations and their assertion of workers'
compensation rights.
2
All named plaintiff-appellants will be referred to
collectively as plaintiffs.
3
This claim is no longer a part of plaintiffs' complaint.
After the case was removed to federal court, plaintiffs moved for
leave to file amended pleading that eliminated the intentional
infliction of emotional distress claim.
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Plaintiffs appeal the judgment of the district court.
Specifically, plaintiffs argue that the trial court erred in
denying Plaintiff-Appellants' Motion to Remand, and in retaining
jurisdiction over this case.
II. PRE-EMPTION.
A. Section 301 of LMRA.
Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA)
states:
Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a
labor organization representing employees in an industry
affecting commerce . . . or between any such labor
organizations, may be brought in any district court in the
United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without
respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to
the citizenship of the parties.
29 U.S.C. § 185(a) (1994).
The intent of LMRA's pre-emptive reach is to fashion a
uniform body of law regarding collective bargaining agreements
and other labor contracts. In Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369
U.S. 95, 103 (1962), the Supreme Court held that “the subject
matter of § 301(a) is particularly one that calls for uniform
law.” The Court's discussion of the policy behind § 301's pre-
emptive scope bears repeating:
The possibility that individual contract terms might
have different meanings under state and federal law
would inevitably exert a disruptive influence upon both
the negotiation and administration of collective
agreements. Because neither party could be certain of
the rights which it had obtained or conceded, the
process of negotiating an agreement would be made
immeasurably more difficult by the necessity of trying
to formulate contract provisions in such a way as to
contain the same meaning under two or more systems of
law which might someday be invoked in enforcing the
contract. . . .
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The importance of the area which would be affected
by separate systems of substantive law makes the need
for a single body of federal law particularly
compelling. The ordering and adjusting of competing
interests through a process of free and voluntary
collective bargaining is the keystone of the federal
scheme to provide industrial peace.
Lucas Flour, 369 U.S. at 103-04, quoted with approval in Lingle
v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, 486 U.S. 399, 404 n.3 (1988).
The principle of § 301 pre-emption developed in Lucas Flour
can be stated as follows: “[I]f the resolution of a state-law
claim depends upon the meaning of a collective-bargaining
agreement, the application of state law (which might lead to
inconsistent results since there could be as many state-law
principles as there are States) is pre-empted and federal labor-
law principles--necessarily uniform throughout the Nation--must
be employed to resolve the dispute.” Lingle, 486 U.S. at 405-06.
B. Section 451.001 of the Texas Labor Code.
Pursuant to Texas statute, “A person may not discharge or in
any other manner discriminate against an employee because the
employee has . . . filed a workers' compensation claim in good
faith.” TEX. LABOR CODE ANN. § 451.001(1) (West 1997). As noted
above, § 301 pre-empts application of a state law “only if such
application requires the interpretation of a collective-
bargaining agreement.” Lingle, 486 U.S. at 413. Thus, if the
resolution of plaintiffs' claims of retaliatory discharge under §
451.001 does not require interpretation of the CBA, they are not
pre-empted.
In order to recover under § 451.001, an employee must show
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that the employer's discriminatory action “would not have
occurred when it did had the worker's compensation claim not been
filed.” Stevens v. National Educ. Centers, Inc., 990 S.W.2d 374,
380 (Tex. App.--Houston [14th Dist.] 1999, writ requested)
(citing Continental Coffee Prods. Co. v. Cazarez, 937 S.W.2d 444,
450 (Tex. 1996)). This purely factual question centers on the
employee's conduct and the employer's motivation. “Neither of
[these] elements requires a court to interpret any term of a
collective-bargaining agreement.” Lingle, 486 U.S. at 407.
To defend against a claim of retaliatory discharge, an
employer must show that it had a non-retaliatory reason for the
discharge. This question also does not “turn on the meaning of
any provision of a collective-bargaining agreement.” Id.
In a retaliatory discharge case, “[a]s the Supreme Court
pointed out in Lingle, the court's task is complete . . .
when it determines, as a factual matter, whether the
employer's motivation for the discharge was the employee's
filing of a worker's compensation claim or some other
motive.” If it determines that retaliation was not a
motive, it does not need to determine whether other motives
were legitimate or whether the CBA justified them.
Jones v. Roadway Express, Inc., 936 F.2d 789, 791-91 (5th Cir.
1991) (“Roadway II”); see also Jones v. Roadway Express, Inc.,
931 F.2d 1086, 1090 (5th Cir. 1991) (“Roadway I”) (citation
omitted) (“[W]e do not require that the CBA be irrelevant to the
dispute; either party may still use the CBA to support the
credibility of its claims.”).
Even if the plaintiffs' retaliatory discharge claim
implicated the CBA, that fact would not necessarily require pre-
emption of the claim. “[C]laims only tangentially involving
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provisions of collective-bargaining agreements are not preempted
by section 301.” Thomas v. LTV Corp., 39 F.3d 611, 617 (5th Cir.
1994); see also Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U.S. 107, 123 (1994)
(“[W]hen the meaning of contract terms is not the subject of
dispute, the bare fact that a collective-bargaining agreement
will be consulted in the course of state-law litigation plainly
does not require the claim to be extinguished.”). “A plaintiff's
state law claims will not be preempted even when they are
'intertwined' with a CBA, so long as they are not 'inextricably
intertwined' with it.”. Roadway I, 931 F.2d at 1089 In other
words, pre-emption occurs when resolution of a state claim is
inextricably intertwined with consideration of terms of the labor
contract or when the application of a state law to a dispute
requires interpretation of the collective-bargaining agreement.
Defendants argue that a finding of pre-emption is mandated
by our decision in Reece v. Houston Lighting & Power Co., 79 F.3d
485 (1996). As noted by the district court, applying defendant's
analysis requires the unjustified conclusion that the Reece court
overruled our holding in Roadway I.
The present case involves the same type of retaliatory
discharge workers' compensation claim brought under the
same Texas statute, which has now been recodified as
Texas Labor Code § 451. In contrast, the decision in
Reece addressed whether the LMRA preempted a different
provision of the Texas Labor Code prohibiting racial
discrimination in employment. The Reece court did not
cite Roadway and nothing in the opinion suggests that
the court intended to modify, let alone overrule, the
decision in Roadway. Unless and until the Fifth
Circuit revisits its Roadway holding, that precedent is
binding on this Court.
(Memorandum Order, June 5, 1997 at 2).
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Interpretation of the CBA is not necessary for the
resolution of this case. The primary issue in this case is the
factual question of motivation: Did the defendant fire the
plaintiffs in retaliation for filing worker's compensation
claims? The answer to this question is not dependent on an
interpretation of the CBA.
Plaintiffs have an independent right to file workers'
compensation claims without fear of losing their jobs. As we
previously stated:
[T]he right to be free from retaliatory discharge for
pursuing workers' compensation exists for Jones, as it
did for the employee in Lingle, independently of the
CBA. The right originates in the statute which Texas
has enacted to protect employees seeking compensation
for work-related injuries. It does not depend on any
right or duty originating in the CBA. Jones' right
would exist even if there were no CBA. The right that
Jones claims accrues to employees “as individual
workers, not as members of a collective organization.”
Roadway I, 931 F.2d at 1090 (emphasis added) (citations omitted);
cf. Lingle, 486 U.S. at 411 (“[T]here is nothing novel about
recognizing that substantive rights in the labor relations
context can exist without interpreting collective bargaining
agreements.”).
Plaintiffs' retaliatory discharge claims do not require
interpretation of the CBA for resolution, therefore, they are not
pre-empted by § 301 of the LRMA.
III. REMAND OF THE RETALIATORY DISCHARGE CLAIM.
Having established that plaintiffs' retaliatory discharge
claim is not pre-empted, we now turn to the issue of whether the
district court properly denied plaintiffs' motion to remand.
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Although the question confronting us is whether the case should
be remanded to state court, rather than whether the defendant
properly removed the case to federal court, the issue of removal
controls our analysis. See Roadway I, 931 F.2d at 1091.
In an effort to control the ever-increasing flow of
compensation cases into already strained federal dockets,
Congress declared such actions non-removable.
A civil action in any State court arising under the
workmens' compensation laws of such State may not be
removed to any district court of the United States.
28 U.S.C. 1445(c) (1994). This section “reflects a strong
congressional policy that where the state court has been utilized
by one of the parties in the state compensation machinery, the
case should remain in the state court for its ultimate
disposition.” Kay v. Home Indemnity Co., 337 F.2d 898, 902 (5th
Cir. 1964). We remain convinced that workmen's compensation
cases “have little real business in a federal court,” and have
therefore, been reluctant “to strain to find a way to entertain”
such suits. Id. at 901.4
In Sherrod v. American Airlines, Inc., we held that “1445(c)
prohibits the removal of any state worker's compensation claims.”
132 F.3d 1112, 1118 (5th Cir. 1998) This bright-line rule is
consistent with the wording of § 1445(c). See Roadway I, 931
F.2d at 1092 (“Because Congress intended that all cases arising
under a state's workers' compensation scheme remain in state
4
We have already held that a claim filed under § 451.001
is one “arising under the workers' compensation law” for purposes
of § 1445(c). See Roadway I, 931 F.2d at 1092.
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court, we believe that we should read section 1445(c) broadly to
further that purpose.”). In that vein, we find that the district
court erred in denying plaintiffs' motion to remand their
retaliatory discharge claim.5
IV. Conclusion.
For the foregoing reasons, we REVERSE the district court's
order denying plaintiffs' motion to remand and REMAND this case
to the district court with instructions to remand to the state
court. In addition, we VACATE the district court's ruling on the
causal connection between plaintiffs' terminations and their
workers' compensation claims.
5
After reversing the district court's order denying the
plaintiffs' motion to remand, the issue of whether the district
court erred by granting defendant's motion for summary judgment
regarding the merits of plaintiffs' claims becomes moot.
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