Versie Kimble v. D. J. McDuffy Inc.

1981-12-07

Headline: Court refuses to review a worker’s claim that employers conspired to blacklist employees for past injury lawsuits, leaving lower-court rulings intact and preserving a split among federal appeals courts.

Holding: The Court denied review, leaving the lower courts’ rulings intact that claims under 42 U.S.C. §1985(2) must allege racial or class-based animus and that these facts did not satisfy that requirement.

Real World Impact:

Leaves lower-court rulings requiring class-based animus intact.
Makes it harder for workers to win §1985(2) claims without class-based discrimination.
Keeps circuit split over the statute’s scope unresolved.

Topics: workplace retaliation, civil rights lawsuits, federal court proceedings, employee blacklisting

Summary

Background

The worker (an oil driller) says his employer fired him after the company joined a nonprofit that tracked workers’ compensation and personal-injury suits. He filed a class action under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2), seeking money and a court order to stop the practice. The federal district court granted summary judgment for the employers. A divided appellate panel partially reversed, but the full Fifth Circuit sitting en banc affirmed the district court by an 11-to-10 vote.

Reasoning

The key legal question was whether the first part of § 1985(2) — which protects federal court parties and witnesses from certain conspiracies — requires proof that the conspiracy was motivated by racial or other class-based hostility. The Fifth Circuit majority looked to the statute’s history and this Court’s prior decision in Griffin v. Breckenridge and concluded that claims under § 1985(2) must allege racial or class-based animus. The panel had also said that “attending” federal court could include filing a complaint, but the en banc court rejected that ground as an alternative basis to win the case.

Real world impact

Because the Supreme Court denied review, the lower-court rulings stay in place. Workers who say they were blacklisted for filing injury or compensation claims will generally need to show class-based discrimination to bring a §1985(2) claim. The decision leaves a split among federal appeals courts about the statute’s scope unresolved.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice White dissented from the denial: he would have granted review to resolve the circuit conflict and to decide whether “attending” includes filing a federal complaint, but he would not have granted the discrete-class question.