U.S. Supreme Court

SHEET METAL WORKERS v. EEOC, 478 U.S. 421 (1986)

478 U.S. 421

LOCAL 28 OF THE SHEET METAL WORKERS' INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION ET AL.v. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

No. 84-1656.

Argued February 25, 1986

Decided July 2, 1986

In 1975, the District Court found petitioner union and petitioner apprenticeship committee of the union guilty of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against nonwhite workers in recruitment, selection, training, and admission to the union. The Court ordered petitioners to end their discriminatory practices, established a 29% nonwhite membership goal, based on the percentage of nonwhites in the relevant labor pool in New York City, to be achieved by July 1981, and also ordered petitioners to implement procedures designed to achieve this goal under the supervision of a court-appointed administrator. Thereafter, the administrator proposed and the court adopted an affirmative-action program. The Court of Appeals affirmed, with modifications. On remand, the District Court adopted a revised affirmative-action program, and extended the time to meet the 29% membership goal. The Court of Appeals again affirmed. In 1982 and again in 1983, the District Court found petitioners guilty of civil contempt for disobeying the court's earlier orders. The court imposed a fine to be placed in a special Employment, Training, Education, and Recruitment Fund (Fund), to be used to increase nonwhite membership in the union and its apprenticeship program. The District Court ultimately entered an amended affirmative-action program establishing a 29.23% nonwhite membership goal to be met by August 1987. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's contempt findings (with one exception), the contempt remedies, including the Fund order, and the affirmative-action program with modifications, holding that the 29.23% nonwhite membership goal was proper and did not violate Title VII or the Constitution.

Held:

The judgment is affirmed.

 753 F.2d 1172, affirmed.

JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, III, and VI, concluding that:

1. The District Court did not use incorrect statistical evidence in evaluating petitioners' membership practices. Pp. 440-442.

2. The contempt fines and Fund order were proper remedies for civil contempt. These sanctions were clearly designed to coerce compliance with the District Court's order, rather than to punish petitioners for their contemptuous conduct, and thus were not criminal contempt citations. Pp. 442-444.

3. The District Court properly appointed an administrator to supervise petitioners' compliance with the court's orders. In light of the difficulties inherent in monitoring such compliance, and especially petitioners' established record of resistance to prior state and federal court orders, appointment of an administrator was well within the District Court's discretion. While the administrator may interfere with petitioners' membership operations, such "interference" is necessary to put an end to petitioners' discriminatory ways. Pp. 481-482.

JUSTICE BRENNAN, joined by JUSTICE MARSHALL, JUSTICE BLACKMUN, and JUSTICE STEVENS, concluded in Parts IV, V, and VII that:

1. Section 706(g) of Title VII does not prohibit a court from ordering, in appropriate circumstances, affirmative race-conscious relief, such as the District Court ordered in this case, as a remedy for past discrimination. Pp. 444-479.

(a) Section 706(g)'s language plainly expresses Congress' intent to vest district courts with broad discretion to award "appropriate" equitable relief to remedy unlawful discrimination. The last sentence of 706(g), which prohibits a district court from ordering a union to admit an individual who was "refused admission . . . for any reason other than discrimination" does not say that a court may order relief only for actual victims of past discrimination. Rather, the provision addresses only the situation where the plaintiff demonstrates that a union has engaged in unlawful discrimination but the union can show that a particular individual would have been refused admission even in the absence of discrimination. In this case, neither the membership goal nor the Fund order required petitioners to admit to membership individuals who had been refused admission for reasons unrelated to discrimination. Pp. 445-447.

(b) The availability of affirmative race-conscious relief under 706 (g) as a remedy for violations of Title VII furthers the broad purposes underlying the statute. In some circumstances, such relief may be the only effective means available to ensure the full enjoyment of the rights protected by Title VII. Pp. 447-451.

(c) Th