Equal Protection: A State Employee Is Not a “Class-of-One”
In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court on June 9, 2008, held that the “class-of-one” theory of equal protection does not apply to state employees. The Equal Protection Clause of Fourteenth Amendemnt to the U.S. Constition, upon which the class-of-one theory is based, provides, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. Constit. amend. XIV, § 1 (emphasis added). In Engquist v. Oregon Department of Agriculture, 128 S.Ct. 2146 (2008), a public employee alleged that she had been “arbitrarily treated differently from other similarly situated employees,” and that such treatment gave rise to a class-of-one equal protection claim. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected Engquist’s position that a previous Supreme Court decision, Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562 (2000), should be extended to encompass class-of-one claims raised by state employees against the state as their employer.
In 2000, the Supreme Court, in Village of Willowbrook, held that the constitutional guarantee of equal treatment under the law applies to every “person,” and, therefore, individuals who have been treated unequally by the government can raise an equal protection claim, even if they only represent a class-of-one. Village of Willowbrook, however, did not deal with the government as an employer. Instead, Village of Willowbrook dealt with a situation in which Olech, the plaintiff, had requested that the Village of Willowbrook connect her house to municipal water. Before agreeing to connect Olech to municipal water, the Village first required that she obtain a 22 foot easement, even though the Village only required others seeking connection to municipal water to obtain a 15 foot easement. Ruling in Olech’s favor, the Court held that Olech’s allegations were sufficient to state a claim for relief under traditional equal protection analysis, and stated that, “[o]ur cases have recognized successful equal protection claims brought by a ‘class of one,’ where the plaintiff alleges that she has been intentionally treated differently from others similarly situated and that there is no rational basis for the difference in treatment.”
The case presented to the Supreme Court by Engquist, however, differed from Olech in signifiacnt regard. In Enquist, the petitioner, Anup Enquist, was an employee of the Oregon Department of Agriculture (“ODA”), where she worked as an international food standards specialist. Engquist alleged that another ODA employee, Joseph Hyatt, made repeated attempts to harass her. In 2001, Hyatt was promoted to a supervisory position, despite some indications that Enquist may have been more qualified. After Hyatt attained the supervisory position, Engquist alleged that he continued to harass her, and a few months after his promotion, Hyatt, together with the Assistant Director of ODA, fired Engquist, citing budgetary reasons. Engquist, however, alleged that there was no credible justification for dismissing her instead of other ODA employees.
In 2002, Engquist brought suit in federal court against ODA. In her complaint, she included an equal protection claim, asserting that she had been mistreated and fired “for arbitrary, vindictive, and malicious reasons.” In effect, Engquist argued that the Equal Protection Clause forbids public employers from irrationally treating one employee differently from others similarly situated, regardless of whether the different treatment is based on the employee’s membership in a particular class. The District Court, when deciding a motion for summary judgment filed by ODA, held that Engquist could maintain a class-of-one claim by showing “that [ODA’s] actions were spiteful efforts to punish her for reasons unrelated to any legitimate state objective.” The District Court also concluded that, “[a]s with any equal protection claim, plaintiff must also demonstrate that she was treated differently than others who were similarly situated.” At trial, the jury ultimately returned a verdict in favor of Engquist on her class-of-one claim.
The ODA appealed the District Court’s decision, and the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that “the class-of-one equal protection theory is not applicable to decisions made by public employers.” The Ninth Circuit, in its decision, contrasted the role that the government played in this case from the role it played in the Supreme Court’s Village of Willowbrook decision. In Village of Willowbrook, the Ninth Circuit noted, the government acted a sovereign; whereas here, the government was acting as a proprietor managing its own affairs. The Ninth Circuit concluded that when a government is acting as a proprietor of its own affairs, as it does in the employment realm, the class-of-one theory of Equal Protection does not apply.
The Supreme Court, hearing the case upon Engquist’s appeal of the Ninth Circuit’s decision, noted the it had previously recognized that the government’s powers are broader when it acts as an employer rather than a sovereign. With this principle in mind, the Court focused on the balance of interests between the government as employer and the employee. The Court noted that it has “long held the view that there is a crucial difference, with respect to constitutional analysis, between the government exercising ‘the power to regulate or license, as lawmaker,’ and the government acting ‘as proprietor, to manage [its] internal operation.’” Furthermore, the Court concluded that “[t]his distinction has been particularly clear in our review of state action in the context of public employment.” Therefore, the Court concluded, “the government as employer indeed has far broader powers than does the government as sovereign.” This is true because “[t]he government’s interest in achieving its goals as effectively and efficiently as possible is elevated from a relatively subordinate interest when it acts as sovereign to a significant one when it acts as employer.”
While continuing to undertake this balancing process, the Court looked to its decisions involving the competing interests of the government as employer and the employee in the realm of First Amendment speech by public employees. The Court specifically looked to Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138 (1983), a First Amendment case dealing with state employees, and noted that in Connick it held that “a federal court is not the appropriate forum in which to review the wisdom of a personnel decision taken by a public agency allegedly in reaction to the employee’s behavior.” The Court noted that in Connick it concluded that "government offices could not function if every employment decision became a constitutional matter.” Therefore, “constitutional review of government employment decisions must rest on different principles than review of . . . restraints imposed by the government as sovereign.”
The Court then used these principles as the touchstones for deciding Engquist’s case, and concluded that its Olech decision did not create liability for the state government to class-of-one claims raised by state employees. In so concluding, the Court construed the Olech decision narrowly. In Olech, the Court notedthere had been a clear standard against which allegedly discriminatory government action could be measured. According to the Court, the same was not true in the case Engquist. The Court described the state government’s decision in Engquist as a “form[] of state action . . . which by [its] nature involved discretionary decisionmaking based on a vast array of subjective, individualized assessments.” In such a context, “allowing a challenge based on the arbitrary singling out of a particular person would undermine the very discretion that such state officials are entrusted to exercise.” Therefore, while the Court’s decision in Olech did apply the Equal Protection Clause to the claim of plaintiff who was not alleging class-based discrimination, the Enquist Court concluded that the same rationale could not be extended to cases in which the state government acts as an employer. The Court suggested that recognizing a class-of-one claim in this context would “upset long-standing personnel practices,” because “[t]he power of employers to discharge employees for reasons that may appear arbitrary, unless constrained by contract or statute, is well-established under the common law of at-will employment.” The majority went on to conclude that “[t]he class-of-one theory of equal protection is another constitutional area where the rights of public employees should not be as expansive as the rights of ordinary citizens.”