Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals

In this case, the Supreme Court will decide whether the FMLA’s self-care provision abrogates state sovereign immunity from a suit for damages under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Coleman argues that courts should analyze the FMLA as a whole—not provision-by-provision—and that the entire Act represents Congress’s intentional effort to remedy gender discrimination in employment. As such, Coleman argues that the Court’s decision in Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, holding that Congress abrogated state immunity in the FMLA’s family-leave provision, should control. The Maryland Court of Appeals and the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts (collectively “Maryland”), counter that the Supreme Court should interpret individual provisions of the FMLA separately, and that analyzed independently, the self-care provision does not reflect Congressional intent to address gender discrimination. Because of this lack of intent, Maryland argues that allowing the provision to abrogate state immunity from suit would not be a “congruent and proportional” remedy under the test set forth in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507.

Should Courts Analyze the FMLA as a Whole or by Examining Its Individual Provisions?

Coleman argues that Congress enacted the four main medical-leave provisions in the FMLA as an integrated effort to target gender discrimination in employment. Each prong, he contends, is necessary to effectuate Congress’s goal, and separating the self-care provision from the rest of the provisions will severely diminish the Act’s efficacy. Coleman argues that the self-care provision is specifically necessary to counterbalance employers’ perceptions that women will take more leave than men. The other FMLA provisions, he notes, are targeted more toward women, as they concern family matters in which women are generally more involved. Coleman contends that the self-care provision, which is gender-neutral because it applies to any employee who has a serious illness, ensures that employers will not disfavor women. This is so, Coleman argues, because laws that aim to provide leave to women only give employers an incentive to not hire women, and the FMLA applies to all workers, regardless of gender.

Coleman contends that because the four medical leave provisions are part of one scheme, they are inextricably interrelated, and thus the Court should analyze them together. He points out that in Hibbs, the Court already determined that the FMLA’s family-leave provision legitimately abrogates sovereign immunity. Because Hibbs involved the same statute and because a statute’s provisions should be analyzed together, Coleman argues that the same reasoning the Court applied in Hibbs should apply to validate the self-care provision’s abrogation of state immunity.

Maryland counters that the FMLA’s self-care provision should be analyzed separately from the other provisions. The state points out that the decision in Hibbs was limited to analyzing just one provision of the FMLA—the family-leave provision. Under City of Boerne, an act of Congress is appropriate legislation under Section 5 if the law is congruent and proportional to the wrong sought to be remedied. For a remedy to be “congruent and proportional,” Maryland contends, that remedy must match the right granted in a particular section of a statute. Because Congress can invoke any and all of its constitutional powers in creating statutes, Maryland suggests that it is quite possible that some provisions will be authorized by different Article I powers than others. The state argues that while Congress undoubtedly used its Fourteenth Amendment, Section 5 power to authorize some FMLA provisions—and this power allows abrogation of state immunity—other provisions may be authorized by other enumerated powers that do not allow Congress to abrogate immunity.

How Should the Constitutional Right at Issue in the Self-Care Provision be Defined?

Underlying Coleman’s argument that the statute should be evaluated as a whole is his belief that the constitutional right at issue is gender discrimination. Because gender discrimination is a suspect classification, he argues that the FMLA was appropriate legislation under Section 5. Congress has broad power to enforce constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, Coleman points out. He contends that this power entails enacting legislation to prohibit Equal Protection rights violations, such as the ones involved in gender discrimination. In enacting the self-care provision, Coleman argues, Congress was ensuring protection of this Equal Protection right to be free from gender discrimination. As such, he contends that allowing employees to bring suit against states for self-care leave is a permissible preventative measure to protect against violations of this suspect classification.

Maryland counters that Congress’s true purpose in enacting the self-care provision was to protect the economic situation of employees and to ensure that employers do not discriminate against any employee for being seriously ill. The right at issue involves only rational basis review, the state contends, because disability is not a suspect or quasi-suspect classification. Furthermore, the state argues, the fact that the self-care provision targeted economic consequences indicates that Congress invoked its Commerce Clause powers, not Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Commerce Clause, Maryland asserts, does not allow Congress to abrogate state immunity. The state also contends that Congress can only enforce constitutional rights, not substantively determine what constitutes a constitutional violation. The state argues that in allowing employees to bring actions for damages against states for denying them self-care leave, Congress is using the FMLA to create a substantive policy, not a remedy.

Are the Remedies in the Self-Care Provision “Congruent and Proportional”?

Coleman contends that the remedies in the self-care provision are “congruent and proportional” to address gender discrimination. The remedies that the FMLA provides as a whole, he argues, are narrowly tailored and are limited in their application. Coleman points out that under the self-care provision, an employee must follow certain procedures to be entitled to leave, and that the recovery allowed under the provision only grants employees the compensation they would otherwise have received without denial of sick leave. Furthermore, Coleman argues, the remedies in the self-care provision are appropriate because Congress intended the FMLA to remedy a gap in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (“PDA”) Coleman asserts that the PDA previously allowed employers to deny benefits to pregnant women if those employers would also deny benefits to disabled employees, and the FMLA fixed this by requiring all employers to provide leave to disabled employees.

Maryland responds by asserting that under the City of Boerne test for congruence and proportionality, the remedy far exceeds the right at issue in the self-care provision. The state argues that the amount of leave provided in the statute is already a very large entitlement. Moreover, Maryland argues, even if Congress intended the self-care provision to fix the gap in the PDA, the remedy provided is too broad to be proportionate to the need for self-care leave. The FMLA’s self-care provision makes the question of discrimination based on pregnancy a moot point by circumscribing employers’ ability to deny leave to disabled employees, Maryland contends. It argues that since the FMLA requires employers to provide self-care leave, an employer cannot deny a woman pregnancy-related leave on the grounds that the employer does not provide any self-care leave. In addition, the state argues, Congress does not need to abrogate state immunity from suit in the self-care provision to achieve its goal of mandating that employers provide employees with self-care leave. Maryland points out that many states offer greater protections than the FMLA, that employees can sue state officials for violations of the FMLA under Ex parte Young for injunctive relief, and that the Department of Labor can bring an action against a state that violates the self-care provision.