Nonexclusivity of Statutory Remedies for Employment Discrimination: Brooke v. Restaurant Services, Inc
| Jurisdiction | United States,Federal,Colorado |
| Citation | Vol. 25 No. 9 Pg. 79 |
| Pages | 79 |
| Publication year | 1996 |
1996, September, Pg. 79. Nonexclusivity of Statutory Remedies for Employment Discrimination: Brooke v. Restaurant Services, Inc
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964(fn1) is the most comprehensive and frequently invoked federal legislation addressing the problem of employment discrimination.(fn2) Its purpose is "to achieve equality of employment opportunities" for the classes it protects and to make whole the members of those classes who have suffered injuries on account of discrimination.(fn3) The state counterpart to Title VII is the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act ("CADA" or "Act").(fn4) Its enactment "was intended to provide a mechanism by which Colorado could eradicate the underlying causes of discrimination and halt discriminatory practices. . . ."(fn5)
Together, these statutory schemes have afforded employees and applicants for employment in Colorado a variety of remedies over the last several decades. However, because these and other antidiscrimination statutes are limited in terms of available remedies, jurisdictional reach, short limitations periods, the requirements of administrative procedure and other proof-related factors restricting the scope of their applicability, discrimination claimants have long resorted to tort and contract principles in the search for true make-whole remedies.
This article discusses the development of the general rule of nonexclusivity of statutory remedies, including cases addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Colorado appellate courts. It ends with an examination of the 1995 case of Brooke v. Restaurant Services, Inc., Colorado's most recent decision on the issue.
The U.S. Supreme Court has created a general rule of nonexclusivity of statutory remedies in order to advance the purposes underlying Title VII. It was first confronted with the exclusivity issue in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co.(fn6) The Alexander court unanimously held that an employee who unsuccessfully takes a discrimination claim to arbitration is not thereby precluded from a de novo consideration of the claim in a subsequent Title VII action brought in court.(fn7) This holding was based on the fact that the arbitration in this case was an attempt to vindicate a contractual right under a collective bargaining agreement, whereas the Title VII lawsuit was an assertion of "independent statutory rights accorded by Congress."(fn8)
The Court also held that the doctrine of election of remedies was no bar to a subsequent Title VII claim because that doctrine operates only when remedies pursued are legally or factually inconsistent. The Court found that the legislative history of Title VII made clear that it was "designed to supplement, rather than supplant, existing laws and institutions relating to employment discrimination."(fn9)
Since the Alexander opinion, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the nonexclusivity principle by reiterating it in one case(fn10) and by determining the breadth of its scope through the carving out of two relatively narrow exceptions in two subsequent cases.
The first exception is based on § 717 of Title VII,(fn11) which was added to the 1964 Act in 1972 to allow discrimination claims by federal employees. In Brown v. General Services Administration,(fn12) the Court held that § 717 provides an exclusive remedy in federal employment discrimination cases because its legislative history shows that because Congress thought there was no other effective remedy it must have intended § 717 as the...
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