Trevino v. Ramos

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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