Attorney and Counselor at Law
March 4, 2020:- The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) has published three new decisions (link).
One of the cases (Chase, et al v. Crescent Yacht Club, et al) involves an award of attorney’s fees and cots in the amount of approximately $83,000.00 on top of a damages award of almost $30,000.00.
January 15, 2019:- The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) has published its draft procedural regulations, and I am happy to report that the draft includes a proposal of mine, or at least a version of it.
Readers may recall that back in 2017 I wrote a bill to cover situations where there is doubt that the MCAD has jurisdiction to investigate a complaint. (New MCAD Bill Filed). If a person accused of discrimination files a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, the MCAD should rule on that motion first, before launching an investigation. In the meantime, the Investigating Commissioner should stay (i.e. suspend) the investigation.
The new proposed rules give the Investigating Commissioner clear authority to issue a stay.
Generally, investigation of a complaint shall not be not stayed pending the ruling on a motion. However, where the Commission’s jurisdiction or authority to proceed is challenged by a motion filed with the Commission, the Investigating Commissioner may stay investigation of the merits of the charge pending a ruling on the motion.
Draft 804 CMR 1.13 (9)(b)(3). Here is a link.
Although not as good as an automatic stay, this is a very welcome step. Well done, MCAD.
Must a charity that offers free reconstructive surgery to female victims of domestic violence also provide those services to a gay man? No, said the MCAD in a decision last September. Only two months earlier the Legislature and Governor had prohibited places of public accommodations from excluding men from women’s restrooms and locker rooms, so you might think the case would have grabbed the odd headline, but apart from this Mass Lawyers Weekly article it received surprisingly little media attention.
The respondent was the R.O.S.E (Regaining One’s Self Esteem) Fund, a non-profit that seeks to help women who are the survivors of domestic violence. In 2008 it declined to extend its services to Kevin Doran, whose male partner had assaulted him, leaving him with broken teeth and facial bones. With the support of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), Mr. Doran argued that the ROSE Fund is a place of public accommodation and that by turning him away it had violated the Massachusetts anti-discrimination laws.
In 2014 an MCAD hearing officer ruled in favor of the ROSE Fund, finding that the organization was not a place of public accommodation. In its appeal brief GLAD said the decision meant that “ROSE can now discriminate not only against men, but also on the basis of race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and disability as well.”
Nevertheless the full three-member Commission upheld the 2014 decision on First Amendment grounds:
“The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the venerable history of the public accommodation laws in Massachusetts, but when applied to expressive activity, the laws may not act to compel certain speech in violation of the First Amendment.”
For that reason, the Commission held that “a private charity set up with the express purpose of serving a narrow community may be allowed to make choices about whom to serve, based on the purpose of the organization and consistent selection criteria.”
This is a very narrow ruling. The MCAD limits its First Amendment expressive-activity exception to a thin sliver of entities: tax-exempt corporations set up to serve a “narrow community,” as opposed to regular businesses and individuals who do not have tax-exempt status and cater to the general public. The decision sits awkwardly alongside expressive-conduct cases from other jurisdictions such as Elane Photography (photographers fined for refusing to photograph same-sex commitment ceremony) and Barronnelle Stutzman (flower arranger fined for refusing to design arrangement for her friend’s same-sex wedding). In those cases, the fact that the defendants’ businesses consisted of expressive activity did not exempt them from the legal obligation to provide their services at same-sex weddings. If those are not examples of the state “compelling certain speech” I don’t know what is.
And as for why tax-exempt corporations should have greater free-speech rights than the rest of us, that is not something the MCAD’s Doran decision addresses.
September 1, 2016:- Employers take note: In compliance with the Act Relative to Transgender Discrimination that Governor Baker signed into law in July, earlier today the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives its Gender Identity Guidance. Much of the document is old, a restatement of the MCAD’s 2015 Advisory, including the “best practices” e.g. “update personnel records, email systems, and other documents to reflect [an] employee’s stated name and gender identity, and ensure confidentiality of any prior documentation of an employee’s pre-transition name or gender marker.”
But the section of the Guidance regarding proof of gender identity and restrooms (Part III. D) is new. Readers will recall that the statute requires that employers allow employees and members of the public to use the restroom “consistent with their gender identity.” The Guidance states that “[r]equiring an employee to provide identification or proof of any particular medical procedure (including gender affirming surgery) in order to access gender designated facilities, may be evidence of discriminatory bias” (emphasis added).
This is important to note because an earlier part of the Guidance (III. A: Definition of Gender Identity) states that when it investigates claims of discrimination the MCAD may look at “medical records from medical or other professionals involved in the treatment or transition of the individual seeking, in the process of, or who has completed gender transition.”
In a nutshell: When an employee files a discrimination claim against the employer the MCAD can consider evidence of a medical procedure, but ahead of time — unless it wishes to invite an MCAD investigation — an employer must not ask an employee for proof of any particular medical procedure.
July 22, 2016:- When Governor Baker signs into law Senate Bill 2199, titled “An Act to Establish Pay Equity,” Massachusetts employment law will un-define (not merely re-define) an important word. Here is the text of the very first section of the bill:
Section 1 of chapter 149 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2014 Official Edition, is hereby amended by striking out the definition of “Woman”.
So, farewell “woman,” a word that the statute used to define as “a female eighteen or over” but now does not define at all.
And farewell “sex,” too. Out with the hackneyed old phrase “no employer shall discriminate in any way in the payment of wages as between the sexes,” and in with the new: “No employer shall discriminate in any way on the basis of gender in the payment of wages.”
Pondering the replacement of sex with gender, and mulling over one of the other laws enacted this session, An Act Relative to Transgender Discrimination, which prohibits discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of gender identity, I see the potential for some mischief.
Could an employer charged with discriminating on the basis of gender raise the defense that the gender of her employees is information to which she is not privy? After all, gender is a matter of identity not physiology. I know this because I just read it in the relevant statute (clause 59, if you’re curious), which tells me in pertinent part:
“Gender identity” shall mean a person’s gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.
Got that? Gender identity means “gender-related identity, appearance or behavior.” If you are not satisfied with that definition and worry about the challenges of establishing gender identity in the courtroom, fear not; the Legislature recognized the need for greater clarity as to “when and how gender identity may be evidenced” and saw the need for guidance. In addition to having a stab at it themselves (the statute says that litigants may offer any of the following: “medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity, or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity”) lawmakers delegated the task of crafting said guidance to the Attorney General and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. They are due to report to the Legislature by September 1, 2016.
In the meantime, what do we know? Well, we have replaced wage discrimination on the basis of sex (a matter of physiology) with wage discrimination on the basis of gender (a matter of identity). Of course, how a person “identifies” is not always obvious, and some think it shows rather poor manners to ask. So in the inevitable litigation, I can imagine a cross-examination of an employer along these lines:
Q. Does your employee Valery earn more than your employee Valerie for comparable work?
A. Yes.
Q. What gender is Valery?
A. I don’t know.
Q. What about Valerie?
A. No idea.
Goodbye woman, goodbye sex. Hello protracted litigation.
July 1, 2016:- The term “mission creep” refers to a military operation that gradually expands beyond its stated objectives. A new report provides evidence of a government commission repeatedly extending its reach beyond the parameters laid out in its statutory remit, a phenomenon I hereby dub “commission creep.”
The State Auditor has published an official report on the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) and in addition to revealing the usual, garden-variety problems that bedevil state agencies (e.g. mismanagement, inefficiency, and poor book-keeping) it confirms a long-harbored suspicion: The MCAD asserts jurisdiction where it has none. This matters not only to the small business owners who find themselves the target of costly investigations that drag on for years, but to all citizens who expect public servants to abide by one of the bedrock principles of constitutional government, namely the separation of powers (see Article 30 of the Massachusetts Constitution).
Despite clear statutory language confining its jurisdiction to cases filed within 300 days of the last allegedly discriminatory act, the Commission investigates cases filed after the deadline. And it does so on a scale that suggests something more than ineptitude, no mere unfortunate series of oopsy daisy events.
So that readers may judge for themselves, here is the text of the statute (section 5 of chapter 151B of the General Laws) in words as clear and unambiguous as the English language permits:
Any complaint filed pursuant to this section must be so filed within 300 days after the alleged act of discrimination.
The word must falls into the category of words legislative drafters call mandatory, as opposed to precatory or hortatory. In the vernacular, it is hard not mushy.
Nevertheless, the State Auditor’s report (p. 11) reveals that in the three-year period of the audit (2012-2015) the MCAD processed at least 123 separate cases where it lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the applicable statute of limitations had run its course:
[D]uring our audit period, MCAD accepted 123 complaints beyond the 300-day timeframe for complainants to file their complaints. MCAD regulations allow for this 300-day timeframe to be extended under certain conditions, but there was no documentation in the case files to substantiate that any of these complaints met those conditions.
I cannot tell whether the auditors independently identified the 123 cases or simply made note of the instances where the MCAD itself had determined that it lacked jurisdiction on the basis of the limitation period. If the latter, then the determination would have come at the end of the MCAD’s investigative phase, the point at which the Commission issues a Lack of Probable Cause (LOPC) finding. On average that point now arrives four years — yes, four years — after the filing of the complaint. In the meantime MCAD investigators will have required the employer to devote hours responding to questions and demands for internal documents and to attending “investigative conferences” at the agency’s offices.
Either way, this is an extraordinary finding on the part of the State Auditor. The 300-day deadline is not some off-the-cuff recommendation or flexible guideline but a statutory limitation. The Legislature decided that the deadline for filing a discrimination complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) is 300 days, and only the Legislature can amend a statute. By flouting the limitation period so often, the MCAD has arrogated to itself the power to legislate, a power the Massachusetts Constitution expressly reserves to the legislative branch.
The report bears out something I have suspected for some years, i.e. that the MCAD investigates cases where it clearly lacks jurisdiction. Because of my experience with the MCAD, after the 2014 gubernatorial election I sent the incoming Baker-Polito administration a proposal that would remedy the problem, and the associated problem of the MCAD improperly asserting jurisdiction over employers with fewer than six employees (another statutory limit on the MCAD’s jurisdiction called the “small-business exemption”). My proposal is this:
If a respondent files a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, the MCAD shall suspend its investigation until it has adjudicated the motion.
The proposal does not require action on the part of the Legislature. With a nudge from the Governor the Commissioners could make it happen via a simple amendment to the MCAD’s regulations, with proper notice and comment. Under my proposal, the MCAD would have to deal with the threshold matter of jurisdiction before putting the employer to the expense of a full-blown, years-long investigation.
I submitted this suggestion back in January 2015. In view of the State Auditor’s findings, I shall re-send it.
Springfield, Mass. :- It doesn’t happen every day, or very often at all for that matter, so this case merits a mention. An employer terminated a 64-year old, White, male employee in favor of hiring a “younger more aggressive sales person who spoke Spanish and understood Latino culture.” The older White man sued for age and ethnicity discrimination and won.
A hearing officer at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) ordered the company to pay $11,100.00 in lost wages and $5,000.00 for emotional distress. You can read the full decision (issued January 20, 2016) here.
The recent decision from the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) in Nixon v Tony’s Barber Shop has attracted some media coverage, e.g. this story in the Boston Herald and another in the New York Daily News. The MCAD awarded the visually-impaired Joel Nixon $100,000.00 because his employer, Tony’s Barber Shop, fired him after he tripped over a customer’s legs, a chair, and a ladder.
Perhaps the most noteworthy fact for employers is that the respondent, Tony’s Barber Shop, defaulted. At the hearing, there was nobody to advocate for the employer (by raising the possibility of a BFOQ, for example) and the only witness was the complainant himself, Mr. Nixon. The key lesson for employers? Show up!
I see that the declared mission of City of Boston’s treasury department is “to collect and transfer all funds due to the City.” Well, as a result of a generous jury decision, the treasury department is going to have to transfer funds in the amount of $11 million to one of its own employees, senior administrative assistant Chantal Charles. Congratulations to all concerned — parties, counsel, and jury — for demonstrating that whatever happens in Washington, D.C., at least local government can accomplish its mission.
On a completely different subject, here’s a guide to public choice theory.
In the business of intimate hair removal, it turns out that in Massachusetts it is not only unkind but costly for employees to joke about zapping a client in the scrotum with a laser. By “costly” I refer to a figure north of one quarter of a million dollars ($260,000.00, in fact), which is the sum of money that a respondent in a discrimination suit is going to have to part with following a decision from the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD), namely Barnes v. Sleek, Inc., et al.
The bare facts are these: The respondents hired the complainant, Mr. Barnes, to manage a spa in the Burlington mall, where patrons could pay for certain hair removal procedures, such as bikini waxing. Mr. Barnes was only there a week, however. He was fired after complaining to his boss about the employees’ habit of laughing and joking about what the MCAD describes as “clients’ genitals and private parts” (emphasis added; until today I had thought that genitals were private parts, not something separate and additional to them). As an example, the decision refers to a “discussion about intentionally ‘zapping’ a male client in the scrotum with a laser.”
To make matters worse, at least so far as Mr. Barnes was concerned, “the outgoing manager of the spa flashed her breasts to a web-camera.” She expressed the hope that the owner was watching. And all of this going on in the Burlington mall, just a few doors down from Pretzel Twister and the Cheesecake Factory.
Perhaps it is my British school-boyishness, but given the nature of the work, i.e. pubic topiary, I would have considered ribaldry to be a what lawyers call a BFOQ, or a bona fide occupational qualification. Not so the MCAD, which awarded Mr. Barnes $41,641.67 for lost wages and $150,000.00 for emotional distress. In addition, the Commission imposed a civil penalty of $50,000.00 and ordered the respondents to pay a hair over $18,000.00 in legal fees, with interest running at 12%. Altogether that comes to more than a quarter of a million dollars, which is at least as eye-watering as the prospect of a laser zap to the private parts, including but not limited to the genitals.
Readers should note that the respondents did not mount a defense. They did not submit an answer and position statement nor did they, in the words of the decision, “cooperate in the Commission’s investigation.” Although it may not have made any difference to the finding of retaliation — and I am speculating here — the lack of a robust defense may have affected the size of the damage award. With a bit of care and attention, the respondents might have been able to shave off a few thousand dollars.
At a recent conference on employment law, I heard a panelist say that the new Massachusetts law on domestic workers will leave people who hire housecleaners vulnerable to lawsuits in the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD). And those people need not be employers of six or more workers: Even individual homeowners will be open to suit in the MCAD. My first thought was that housecleaners have a hard enough time as it is, without having their potential clients scared away by politicians. After all, who in their right mind would engage the services of a cleaner if the deal included a possible sojourn in the MCAD? My second thought was that the panelist had to be mistaken and that I must go back to the office and read the whole statute for myself. So I did, and now I am slightly more worried than before.
The statute in question is M.G.L. c.149, s. 190 and s. 191, which you can read here and here. Its proponents (the National Domestic Workers Alliance) gave it the moniker the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, and in their FAQs they claim that it covers “housekeepers, housecleaners, nannies, and those who care for the sick, convalescing or elderly.” Some provisions are already in force, and the law in its entirety comes into effect on April 1, 2015. I suspect that by May 1, 2015, the MCAD will have screened in at least one case of a disgruntled housecleaner suing a homeowner for harassment on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, color, age, religion, national origin, disability, or some combination thereof. Of course, this will depend on how the MCAD construes the statutory definition of “domestic worker.”
So who is a “domestic worker” under the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights? Before I tell you who is one, let me tell you who is not one. There are three categories of workers who, although they would qualify as domestic workers in ordinary common parlance, fall outside the statute’s definition of the term. First, personal care attendants. Second, people whose services “primarily consist of childcare on a casual, intermittent and irregular basis,” i.e. babysitters. Third, “an individual whose vocation is not childcare.”
Yes, according to the text of the new law, and contrary to the assertion of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the term “domestic worker” does not include “an individual whose vocation is not childcare.” The two negatives can trip the reader up, so the exclusion merits some time and attention. Bear with me while I re-state it: The term “domestic worker” does not include “an individual whose vocation is not childcare.”
If my powers of reasoning and grasp of English are up to snuff, a domestic worker must be an individual whose vocation is childcare. In other words, if you are an individual whose vocation is childcare, you are a domestic worker; if your vocation is not childcare, you are not a domestic worker. Either the Legislature consciously and deliberately chose to limit the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights to childcare workers, or did so by accident. I am not sure which is worse.
The exemption within the definition defies one of the elementary principles of draftsmanship and rule-making, one that has been around since antiquity. I am no Latin scholar, but I feel confident that when Cicero said exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis he meant that the exception confirms the rule in the cases not excepted, not that the exception should swallow the rule. Accordingly, if one of my Legislative Drafting students had submitted a draft bill containing such a poorly crafted definition, she or he would have to try again.
The meaning of the exemption is plain. Like personal care attendants and babysitters, people whose vocation is not childcare are not “domestic workers” and not, therefore, entitled to the statute’s protection. From the statutory-construction standpoint that should be an end of it. Interpretatio cessat in claris as the maxim says (interpretation comes to an end when the text is clear). But is this what the Legislature meant? I doubt it, given that the Legislature defined the term “domestic worker” to include caring for the elderly, a task not synonymous with — in fact, quite distinct from — caring for children.
What will happen when Mr. Wooster, facing the need to retrench, decides, as part of his belt-tightening, to let go of old Jeeves, his long-suffering English factotum? If Jeeves files a complaint against Wooster in the MCAD alleging harassment on the basis of — picking a couple of categories at random — age and national origin, what will the MCAD intake staffer tell him: Sorry, you lack standing to sue under Chapter 149, Section 191, because you are an individual whose vocation is not childcare? “Is that so?” Jeeves might say, eyebrow raised.
To summarize, my two reasons for worrying about this new law are (1) what it tries to do, (2) that its failure to do what it tries to do will make no difference to the construction the MCAD will put on it. The Legislature’s unintentional limitation of the law to childcare workers will not prevent the MCAD from construing the law as if the limitation did not exist. The MCAD will pretend that the Legislature had drafted it competently, and the courts will defer to the MCAD’s interpretation.
For housecleaners looking for work in Massachusetts, life may become just that bit harder in 2015.
July 19, 2013: Massachusetts law has long protected employees from discrimination based on their disabilities, both real and perceived. It now also protects employees who have suffered discrimination on the basis of a another person’s disability, if that person is someone with whom the employee “associates” (e.g. a spouse). That was the decision that the Supreme Judicial Court released earlier today in the case of Flagg v. Alimed (SJC-11182).
The question before the Court was whether the state’s anti-discrimination law (M.G.L. c. 151B) “bars an employer from discriminating against its employee based on the handicap of a person with whom the employee associates.” In an unequivocal answer, which endorsed the position of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD), the Court stated: “[W]e hold that associational discrimination based on handicap is prohibited under [M.G.L. c. 151B] § 4(16).”
Although they concurred in the opinion, two of the justices (Gants and Cordy) would have found for the plaintiff employee on narrower grounds.
The case involved an employee who was “fired because the employer feared the medical expenses his spouse was likely to incur because of her handicap,” not because of any request for “reasonable accommodations,” such as taking time off to care for her. What concerned the two Justices Gants and Cordy was the possibility that plaintiff employees might use the Flagg decision to argue that employers now have a duty to provide them with reasonable accommodations — flexible schedules for example — based on the needs of the individuals they are associated with, e.g. disabled spouses. Such a reading of Chapter 151B after Flagg would go further than the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), an outcome the two concurring justices would have liked to forestall.
Will the MCAD and lower courts apply associational discrimination under Chapter 151B more broadly than under the ADA, as Justices Gants and Cordy fear? I suspect they will.
For a PDF of my Briefing Paper on the implications of the Flagg decision, click this link: associational-discrimination-paper.pdf.
Peter Vickery, Esq., 