Price v. Choctaw Glove & Safety Co.

United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
August 3, 2006
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
Charles R. Fulbruge III
______________________ Clerk

No. 05-60094

______________________

RITA L. PRICE, ET AL

Plaintiffs

JOHNNIE J. CLEVELAND; LINDA HUNTER; KESHU WASH HILLIE; BETTY
BEAL; RENEE WILLIAMS, ET AL

Plaintiffs-Appellants

versus

CHOCTAW GLOVE & SAFETY COMPANY, INC. doing business as Choctaw
Glove & Safety Company; doing business as Allied Enterprises;
doing business as The Glove Factory

Defendant-Appellee

RITA L PRICE; ET AL

Plaintiffs

RENEE WILLIAMS JOHNNIE J CLEVELAND; LINDA HUNTER; KESHU WASH
HILLIE; BETTY BEAL; ; ETAL

Plaintiffs-Appellants

versus

CHOCTAW GLOVE AND SAFETY COMPANY INC., doing business as Choctaw
Glove & Safety Company; doing business as Allied Enterprises;
doing business as The Glove Factory

Defendants-Appellee

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 ___________________________________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for
the Southern District of Mississippi
___________________________________________________

Before DAVIS, SMITH, and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

DENNIS, Circuit Judge:

This case concerns whether the appellants, who have filed a

Title VII sex discrimination case against the appellee without

first filing an EEOC charge, can invoke the “single filing rule” to

piggyback on the EEOC charge filed by the plaintiff in the lead

case with which appellants’ case has been consolidated. After

reviewing the record and the applicable law, we conclude that they

cannot. Therefore, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of the

appellants’ case for failure to satisfy the prerequisites for

initiating and maintaining their discrimination claims.

1.

This case arises out of sex discrimination alleged by female

employees of appellee Choctaw Glove and Safety Company, Inc.

(“Choctaw Glove”). Rita Price filed a Charge of Discrimination

with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the “EEOC”) on

December 12, 2000, alleging that Choctaw Glove was discriminating

against women based on their sex by relegating them to lower paying

positions. Price filed her charge on behalf of all present and

future female employees of Choctaw Glove. The EEOC issued Price a

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Notice of Right to sue on February 7, 2003 and, on May 1, 2003,

Price timely filed a class action complaint under Title VII in the

Southern District of Mississippi (the “Price Class” or the “Price

Class Action”).1 On June 1, 2004, and again on August 25, 2004,

the district court denied without prejudice Price’s motion for

class certification.2

On August 26, 2004, Johnnie Cleveland and thirty-five other

named plaintiffs ( the “Cleveland Plaintiffs”) filed a Title VII

lawsuit against Choctaw Glove largely based on the same facts

alleged in the Price class action. It is undisputed that, as

female employees of Choctaw Glove, the Cleveland Plaintiffs are

members of the putative Price Class. However, none of the

Cleveland Plaintiffs filed a Charge of Discrimination with the

EEOC. On September 17, 2004, the Cleveland and Price lawsuits were

consolidated, with the Price Class Action designated as the lead

case. Choctaw Glove filed a motion to dismiss the Cleveland

1
The EEOC issued Price a Notice of Right to Sue letter on
November 25, 2002, but the letter was mailed to the wrong address.
This error was corrected by a second letter sent to Price on
February 2, 2003. Therefore, Price’s 90-day time limit to file her
claims under Title VII began on February 7, 2003.
2
On June 1, 2004, the district court found that class
certification was not warranted on the basis of Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) because monetary, and not injunctive
relief, was the predominate relief sought by Price. On August 25,
2004, the district court found that class certification was not
warranted on the basis of Rule 23(b)(3) because individual issues
would predominate over class-wide issues, and judicial efficiency
would not be served by litigating the case as a class action.

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Plaintiffs’ case, which the district court granted on December 22,

2004, the same date on which the district court denied Price’s

final motion for class certification. The Cleveland Plaintiffs,

whose case was dismissed without prejudice, now appeal the

dismissal of their case.

2.

Though Choctaw Glove filed a motion to dismiss the Cleveland

Plaintiffs’ case, the district court treated the motion as one for

summary judgment because Choctaw Glove included evidence outside of

the pleadings. This Court reviews the district court’s grant of

summary judgment de novo.3 Summary judgment is appropriate “if the

pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions

on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is

no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party

is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.”4 If the moving

party meets the initial burden of showing there is no genuine issue

of material fact, the burden shifts to the nonmoving party to

produce evidence or designate specific facts showing the existence

of a genuine issue for trial.”5

3
Gowesky v. Singing River Hospital Systems, 321 F.3d 503, 507
(5th Cir. 2003).
4
Fed. R. Civ. P. 56©); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477
U.S. 317, 322-23 (1986).
5
Allen v. Rapides Parish Sch. Bd., 204 F.3d 619, 621 (5th Cir.
2000).

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 3.

This Circuit has long required plaintiffs to exhaust their

administrative remedies before bringing suit under Title VII.6 In

order to file suit under Title VII, a plaintiff first must file a

charge with the EEOC within 180 days of the alleged discriminatory

act.7 If and once the EEOC issues a right-to-sue letter to the

party who has filed the EEOC charge, that party has 90 days to file

a Title VII action.8 We have not, however, demanded such

exhaustion in all situations because we are aware that literal

compliance does not always effectuate the requirement’s purpose of

promoting informal settlements.9 Thus, we have recognized that

“[i]t would be wasteful, if not vain, for numerous employees, all

with the same grievance, to have to process many identical

complaints with the EEOC. If it is impossible to reach a

settlement with one discriminatee, what reason would there be to

6
See Wheeler v. American Home Products, Corp., 582 F.2d 891,
897 (5th Cir. 1977).
7
42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq. (except that in “deferral
jurisdictions” an extended 300-day period applies; the 300-day
statute of limitations is not applicable to this case).
8
Id.
9
Crawford v. United States Steel Corp., et al., 660 F.2d 663,
666 (5th Cir.1981)(explaining that the purpose of the EEOC charge
requirement is to insure that the settlement of grievances be first
attempted through the office of the EEOC)(internal citations
omitted).

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assume the next one would be successful[?]”10 One such situation in

which we have relaxed the Title VII filing requirement arises when

a non-filing party wishes to piggyback his judicial action on the

claim of a party who followed the administrative procedures. This

Circuit has held that “in an action involving claims of several

persons arising out of similar discriminatory treatment, not all of

them need to have filed EEOC charges as long as one or more of the

plaintiffs had satisfied the requirement.”11 In Oatis v. Crown

Zellerbach Corp., we held that it is not necessary for each member

of a class to file an EEOC charge as a prerequisite to join a Title

VII suit as long as at least one named plaintiff had filed such

charges.12 Wheeler v. American Home Products Corp. extended Oatis

to non-class suits, holding that similarly situated intervenors who

had not filed EEOC charges could maintain a Title VII claim if the

original plaintiffs had filed timely charges.13 In both Oatis and

Wheeler, this Court held that certain eligible parties were excused

from filing an EEOC charge when they were permitted to join or

intervene in a lawsuit in which the original, similarly situated

plaintiff had fully exhausted the administrative requirements.

10
Oatis v. Crown Zellerbach Corp., 398 F.2d 496, 498 (5th Cir.
1968); see also Wu v. Thomas, 863 F.2d 1543, 1547 (11th Cir. 1989).
11
Crawford, 660 F.2d at 665.
12
398 F.2d at 499.
13
582 F.2d at 897.

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 This Circuit further explained the piggyback concept in

Bettcher v. The Brown Schools, Inc., in which we stated that the

“single filing rule” is a “carefully limited exception” that allows

parties to “opt-in to a suit filed by any similarly situated

plaintiff under certain conditions.”14 In Bettcher, this Circuit

would not allow a plaintiff to piggyback on the EEOC charge filed

by a fellow employee who had received a right-to-sue notice from

the EEOC but decided not to file suit. The Court explained that

there are three conditions that must be satisfied before a

plaintiff may invoke the single filing rule:

First, the plaintiff must be similarly situated to the

person who actually filed the EEOC charge. Second, the

charge must have provided some notice of the collective

or class-wide nature of the charge. Finally, a

prerequisite – implicit to be sure - for piggybacking

under the single filing rule is the requirement that the

individual who filed the EEOC charge must actually file

a suit that the piggybacking plaintiff may join.15

Clearly, Bettcher would not allow the Cleveland Plaintiffs to file

a separate suit based on Price’s EEOC charge if Price had not filed

suit herself.

14
262 F.3d 492, 493-94 (5th Cir. 2001), citing, Anson v. Univ.
Texas Health Science Ctr., 962 F.2d 539, 540 (5th Cir. 1992).
15
Id. at 494 (internal citations omitted).

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 It is also clear from Bettcher that this Circuit intended for

the single filing rule only to permit a non-charging party to join

or intervene in a lawsuit filed by a charging party who has

properly exhausted the administrative requirements. Unlike the

situation in Bettcher, Price has actually filed a suit in which the

Cleveland Plaintiffs could have attempted to join. However, the

Cleveland Plaintiffs decided not to “opt-in” to the Price lawsuit.

Instead, the Cleveland Plaintiffs filed their own separate suit and

attempted to piggyback on the Price EEOC charge. The Cleveland

Plaintiffs would now have us read Bettcher as allowing the

extension of the single filing rule to permit the Cleveland

Plaintiffs to file an independent suit on an otherwise

unexhausted Title VII claim. Bettcher does not contemplate

such use of the single filing rule. A non-charging party

cannot bring her own independent lawsuit based upon another

party’s charge. To allow otherwise would “threaten to consume

the statutory rule, which clearly requires all [Title VII]

plaintiffs to file a charge before filing a lawsuit.”16 To do

what the Cleveland Plaintiffs ask would effectively overrule

16
Id. at 495. Bettcher refers specifically to claims brought
under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) claims.
However, the single filing rule refers to the EEOC administrative
charge requirements which are treated the same under the ADEA and
Title VII. See Anson, 962 F.2d at 542-43.

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Bettcher. We need not consider all the reasons we cannot allow

the Cleveland Plaintiffs to invoke the single filing rule in

this situation. The first impediment suffices - this panel

cannot overrule another panel’s precedent.

Our conclusion that individuals filing separate Title VII

suits that are later consolidated may not piggyback is

consistent with the conclusions of our sister circuits which

have addressed the issue. See, e.g., White v. BFI Waste

Services, LLC, 375 F.3d 288, 294 (4th Cir. 2004) (rejecting

application of single filing rule where plaintiff “did not

formally join the earlier EEOC charge or any civil complaint

brought thereafter with respect to that EEOC charge.”);

Tolliver v. Xerox Corp., 918 F.2d 1052, 1057 (2d Cir. 1990)

(“[U]nder Title VII, the single filing rule has been used only

to permit joining a preexisting suit in which at least one

plaintiff had filed a timely charge.”).

CONCLUSION

The Cleveland Plaintiffs did not properly exhaust their

administrative remedies before bringing suit under Title VII.

They did not file a timely charge with the EEOC or receive from

the EEOC the requisite statutory notice before filing their

suit. Their case does not fall within any of the exceptional

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situations in which this Circuit has allowed a claimant to

piggyback his judicial action on the claim of a party who

followed the administrative requisites of the Act. Moreover,

this case does not present persuasive reasons for recognizing

the piggyback exception here. Therefore, the Cleveland

Plaintiffs must fail in their attempt to piggyback on the Price

EEOC charge. For the reasons explained above, the district

court’s dismissal of the Cleveland Plaintiffs for failure to

comply with the Title VII prerequisites is AFFIRMED.

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