Murray v. Birmingham Board of Education et al

Filing 30

MEMORANDUM OPINION and ORDER This matter is before the court on Plaintiffs Motion to Alter, Amend, and/or Vacate the Courts Memorandum of Opinion and Order Dated August 19, 2013. For the reasons stated in this Memorandum Opinion, the court DENIES the motion. This case will proceed with claims asserted against the remaining Defendant, the Birmingham Board of Education. Signed by Judge Karon O Bowdre on 10/31/13. (SAC )

FILED
2013 Oct-31 PM 01:50
U.S. DISTRICT COURT
N.D. OF ALABAMA

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA
SOUTHERN DIVISION
TOMMY MURRAY, et al.,

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Plaintiffs,
v.
BIRMINGHAM BOARD OF EDUCATION,
TYRONE BELCHER, SR, VIRGINIA
VOLKER, BRIAN GIATTINA, CAROL
CLARKE, EMMANUEL FORD, ALANA
EDWARDS, APRIL WILLIAMS, PHYLLIS
WYNE, AND W.J. MAYE, JR.,

Defendants.

CIVIL ACTION NO.
2:13-CV-822-KOB

MEMORANDUM OPINION and ORDER
This matter is before the court on “Plaintiffs [sic] Motion to Alter, Amend, and/or Vacate the
Court’s Memorandum of Opinion and Order Dated August 19, 2013.” (Doc. 27). The Defendants
responded. (Doc. 27). For the reasons stated in this Memorandum Opinion, the court DENIES the
motion.
A motion to alter or amend under Fed. R. Civ. P. 59 does not provide a mechanism for a
dissatisfied party to re-litigate a matter. Arthur v. King, 500 F.3d 1335, 1343 (11th Cir. 2007) (“A
Rule 59(e) motion cannot be used to relitigate old matters, raise argument or present evidence that
could have been raised prior to the entry of judgment”). The Eleventh Circuit has recognized two
grounds for granting a Rule 59 motion: "[1] newly-discovered evidence or [2] manifest errors of law
or fact." Id. at 1343 (quoting In re Kellogg, 197 F.3d 116, 119 (11th Cir. 1999)). Courts in this
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Circuit have recognized that an intervening change in controlling law is also a ground for
reconsideration and an exception to the law of the case doctrine. See, e.g., Summit Medical Center
of Alabama, Inc. v. Riley, 284 F. Supp. 2d 1350, 1355 (M.D. Ala. 2003) (addressing a Rule 59
motion); Oliver v. Orange Cnty., Fla., 456 F. App'x 815, 818 (11th Cir. 2012) (listing the following
exceptions to the law of the case doctrine, allowing a district judge to reconsider a prior ruling: "(1)
new evidence; (2) an intervening change in the law that dictates a different result; or (3) that the prior
decision was clearly erroneous and would result in manifest injustice.").
In their motion, Plaintiffs do not present new evidence or an intervening change in the law.
Instead, the cases they cite predate the submission of the motion to dismiss, and the arguments they
make all could have been made during the original briefing of the issue. The case of Ex parte
Bessemer Bd. of Educ., 68 So. 3d 782 (2011) that they cite in their motion was decided over two
years ago. Further, the cases they cite in their recent sur-reply (doc. 29) are Eleventh Circuit cases
from 1990 and 1991, as well as an opinion from a federal district court sitting in the Southern
District of Alabama that was decided over a year ago and, in any event, is neither controlling nor
reported. Therefore, having eliminated all other proper grounds for reconsideration, the court must
assume that Plaintiffs consider this court’s dismissal of the claims against the individual Defendants
in their official capacities to be clear error that would result in manifest injustice. The court does
not agree with the Plaintiffs’ position, as discussed below.
The first reason that the Plaintiffs give for error was the existence of a request for injunctive
relief and, presumably, the need to have the board members in their official capacities as parties to
carry through with any grant of injunctive relief. As Defendants pointed out in their response,
however, such relief would be due from the Board as an entity and not from the individual members
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of the Board, who are powerless to act except by vote of the Board taken at a meeting compliant with
the Alabama Open Meetings Act. See ALA. CODE §§ 16-1-41.1(b)(2), 16-11-9 & 36-25A.
Therefore, the existence of a request for injunctive relief does not require the presence of the
individual board members as party Defendants.
Further, the Eleventh Circuit in Busby v. City of Orlando held that official capacity suits are,
in actuality, suits against the entity that the officials represent, and, therefore, redundant. 931 F.2d
764, 776 (11th Cir. 1991). Plaintiffs identify no legal authority declining to apply the rule in Busby
where claims of injunctive relief exist, and the court is aware of none that would apply to the
circumstances of this case. Indeed, the Supreme Court decision on which Busby relies states that its
reasoning applies to suits for money damages and equitable relief. See Kentucky v. Graham, 473
U.S. 159, 167 n. 14 (1985) (“There is no longer a need to bring official-capacity actions against local
official, for ... local government units can be sued directly for damages and injunctive or declaratory
relief.”) (emphasis supplied).
In addition, if the Plaintiffs’ argument were valid, the court would expect the Eleventh
Circuit decisions applying Busby to dismiss only the official capacity claims requesting monetary
damages and to retain those requesting injunctive and declaratory relief. The Plaintiffs identify no
cases making that distinction, and this court’s research reveals none. Certainly the cases the
Plaintiffs cite in their briefs do not make that distinction. In the cited district court decision, the
district court addressed this issue and found official capacity claims against individual school board
members requesting injunctive relief to be redundant to the claims against the school board itself.
The court explained:

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Repetition neither makes the heart grow fonder nor the injunction grow
stronger, and an entity need not be told the same thing twice before a
court order will stick. This case is about claims for injunctive relief
against the Board, and plaintiffs cannot repackage these same claims
against the Individual Defendants in their official capacities to bring
them twice, at the cost of unnecessary redundancy, inefficiency, and the
risk of confusion.
M.R. v. Board of School Comm’r, 2012 WL 2931263, at *4 (S.D. Ala. July 18, 2012). While the
district court decision is not controlling, the court finds it well-reasoned and persuasive. However,
far from supporting the Plaintiffs’ position that this court’s dismissal of the official capacity claims
represents clear error, M.R.’s holding and reasoning directly support this court’s ruling. In short,
the Plaintiffs provide no controlling or persuasive authorities to support their position that the
dismissal of the official capacity claims was clear error, and this court is certainly not inclined to
reject its own ruling when well-established case law buttresses it.
A second reason provided was that discovery is not complete. The court agrees with the
Defendants that discovery will not change the well-settled law that claims against individual Board
members in their official capacities is duplicative of claims against the Board itself. As another
complaint about lack of discovery, the Plaintiffs state in paragraph six their motion that they “do
not know fully the extent of Dr. Richardson’s recent participation in the Birmingham Board’s
activities” (doc. 27, at 2), but, as Dr. Richardson is not a named Defendant, the court does not know
why that lack of knowledge is relevant to the dismissal of official capacity claims against these
named Defendants.
The third reason that the Plaintiffs proffer is the Ex parte Bessemer Board case previously
referenced. That case is an Alabama Supreme Court decision addressing immunity of the Bessemer
Board itself and members of the Board sued individually in their official capacities as to claims for
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pay miscalculations brought under Alabama law as violative of Section 16-22-13.1 of the Alabama
Code. The Bessemer Board defendants appealed from the trial court’s order denying their claims
of immunity, and, because the order was not final, the Supreme Court treated the appeals as petitions
for a writ of mandamus. The Supreme Court found that the Board was absolutely immune from suit
under Article I, § 14 of the Alabama Constitution because that constitutional provision extends
immunity from lawsuits to agencies of the state and because the local school board was an agency
of the state with no exceptions to § 14 applying. The Court further held, however, that the members
of the local board sued in their official capacities were not entitled to absolute immunity under the
circumstances of the case because an exception to § 14 applied: “a writ of mandamus will lie to
require action of state officials ... where discretion is exhausted and that which remains to be done
is a ministerial act.” 68 So. 3d at 789. Finding that the duty of the Bessemer Board members is a
legal duty arising from statute that is a ministerial act not involving discretion, the Court denied the
petition for writ of mandamus against the Board members in their official capacities, holding that
the Board members are not entitled to immunity under § 14. Id. at 790-91.
As is clear from this recitation, the Bessemer Board case is inapposite for many reasons,
including that the claims involved were brought under Alabama law, not federal law; that the
immunity invoked was under the Alabama state constitution, not the United States Constitution; and
that the issue addressed was whether the individual Board members’ wrongful acts at issue were
ministerial or discretionary acts, which is not the issue in the instant case. The instant case is a nondiversity case applying federal law (FLSA), and this court is not bound by decisions issued by the
Supreme Court of Alabama applying Alabama law and addressing immunity under the Alabama
State Constitution.
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The final ground in the Plaintiffs’ motion, stated in paragraph seven, refers to an anticipated
motion to dismiss and to claims against the Board members in their individual capacities. The court
need not and will not address arguments regarding a motion that has not yet been filed, and the
Amended Complaint includes no claims against the Board members in their individual capacities.
In the sur-reply, the Plaintiffs cite the case of Stewart v. Baldwin Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 908 F.2d
1499 (11th Cir. 1990) as providing the proper test to determine whether the Board is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity. Because the motion to dismiss at issue addressed only the claims
against the individual Board members in their official capacities and did not address the claims
against the Board itself and the Board’s entitlement to immunity, the court is unsure why the
Plaintiffs are now pointing the court to the four-factor test. To the extent, if any, that the Plantiffs
proffer this case as an example of one that allows a plaintiff to pursue claims against the school
board and the board members sued in their official capacities, the court notes that Stewart did not
specifically address the issue of whether the official capacity claims were redundant. The Court did
allow claims against the individual members to proceed, affirming the trial court’s denial of their
entitlement to qualified immunity or quasi-judicial immunity. Id. at 1511. The Court also mentioned
that the individual board members were sued in their official capacities along with the board itself,
and it affirmed the denial of all defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Id. at 1509-10. In any
event, the Busby case, decided in 1991, the year after Stewart, clarified the Eleventh Circuit’s
position that official capacity claims against individuals are redundant of claims against the entity
they represent, and this court will follow the Eleventh Circuit’s clear direction provided by the more
recent Busby decision and the numerous decisions following it.

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Because the Plaintiffs have not provided any authority to support their position of clear error,
the court FINDS that clear error does not exist, and further, that no other ground exists for granting
the Plaintiffs’ Rule 59 motion. Accordingly, the court DENIES the motion. This case will proceed
with claims asserted against the remaining Defendant, the Birmingham Board of Education.
Dated this 31st day of October, 2013.

____________________________________
KARON OWEN BOWDRE
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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