Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. United Parcel Service, Inc.Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. United Parcel Service, Inc.
OPINION
This case concerns the scope of evidence that Plaintiff-Appellee Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) may obtain in investigating charges of discrimination. Sinisa Matovski, an operations manager for Defendant-Appellant United Parcel Service, Inc. (“UPS”) who has a disability, filed an EEOC charge claiming that UPS discriminated and retaliated against him in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“ADA”). In particular, Matovski claims that UPS published confidential medical information about him and other employees on its intranet page. The EEOC began an investigation into Matov-ski’s claims, which resulted in a subpoena that requested information about how UPS stored and disclosed employee medical information. UPS opposed the subpoena, claiming that the requested information was irrelevant to Matovski’s charge. This resulted in the EEOC filing an application to enforce the subpoena. The district court granted the application, and UPS has appealed. Because the information that the EEOC requests “relates to unlawful employment practices” covered by the ADA, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-8(a) (2012), we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
I. BACKGROUND
The origin of this appeal is an EEOC charge that Matovski filed on March 25, 2014. R. 1 (Mar. 25, 2014 Charge) (Page
Matovski also claimed that, since he disclosed his disability and complained of discrimination, he had “been subjected to heightened scrutiny of [his] performance and subjected to negative treatment that [his] peers who do not have disabilities do not face.” R. 1 (Mar. 25, 2014 Charge) (Page ID #30). Specifically, he claimed that “[i]n the spring of 2013 and again in October of 2013, [he] complained to Human Resources about what [he] believed to be discriminatory treatment based on [his] disability and need for accommodation, and since [he] raised these concerns, the negative treatment of [him] has accelerated.” Id.
As part of its investigation into these charges, the EEOC issued a subpoena for five pieces of evidence, three of which are at issue in this appeal.
UPS petitioned the EEOC to modify the subpoena, arguing that some of the requested information was irrelevant and burdensome, R. 1 (UPS’s Pet. at 4) (Page ID #44), but the EEOC denied UPS’s
II. DISCUSSION
A. Standard of Review
“A subpoena enforcement proceeding is a summary process designed to decide expeditiously whether a subpoena should be enforced.” EEOC v. Roadway Express, Inc. (Roadway Express I),
B. Relevance
“Once an adequate charge has been issued, the EEOC has authority to serve subpoenas to gain ‘access to ... any evidence of any person being investigated or proceeded against that relates to unlawful employment practices ... and is relevant to the charge under investigation.’ ” Roadway Express II,
As an illustration of this generous construction, we have held in the Title VII context that “the EEOC is entitled to ... evidence [that] focuses on the existence of patterns of racial discrimination in job classifications or hiring situations other than those that the EEOC’s charge specifically targeted.” Roadway Express II,
UPS argues that “[t]he EEOC is only entitled to information regarding similarly-situated employees.” Reply Br. at 4. However, under the standard described above, there is no such restriction under § 2000e-8(a). In fact, in Roadway Express II, we deemed evidence to be relevant despite the fact that it concerned employees who were decidedly not similarly situated to the employee who was the subject of the EEOC charge; whereas “the charge only alleged failure to hire women as operators and laborers and the failure to promote blacks to sales and upper management positions,” we held that evidence “regarding the promotion of women to sales and upper level management positions and the hiring of blacks as operators and laborers” was nevertheless relevant.
With these principles in mind, we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in this case. The first and third requests, which were for the databases that stored and allegedly disclosed employee medical information, are directly relevant to Matovski’s charge. Matovski claims that UPS violated the ADA’s confidentiality provision by publishing his request for medical leave on “on the company’s Health and Safety intranet site.” R. 1 (Mar. 25, 2014 Charge) (Page ID #30) (citing 42 U.S.C. §' 12112(d)). He also notes in his amended charge that “all other employees subject to the Health and Safety incident action/reports have had their confidentiality breached in the same manner as me.” R. 1 (Feb. 16, 2015 Charge) (Page ID #32). Matovski’s charge thus directly implicates the databases that UPS uses to store and potentially disclose employee medical information. The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding such reports relevant to Matovski’s charge.
UPS argues in response that the EEOC’s requests are overbroad because the information contained in the SCS-CSI H & S report and RiskConsul Oracle Database contain information about other employees from other regions in the United States and Canada and that Matovski’s information never appeared on the Ri-skConsul Oracle Database.' However, the breach of confidentiality that Matovski describes in his amended charge is not limited to himself; he claims that “all other employees subject to Health and Safety incident action/reports have had their confidentiality breached in the same manner as me.” R. 1 (Feb. 16, 2015 Charge) (Page ID #32). Moreover, the EEOC is entitled to evidence that shows a pattern of discrimination other than the specific instance of discrimination described in the charge. See Roadway Express II,
UPS also argues that Matovski’s amended charge is not valid because it “appears to have been amended for an illegitimate purpose — to obtain documents that the subpoena otherwise could not reach.” Appellant’s Br. at 16. However, UPS did not raise this argument below. Therefore, it is forfeited. See Lucaj v. FBI,
The district court also did not abuse its discretion in finding that UPS’s “privacy case” criteria were relevant to Matovski’s charge. The explanation that the EEOC provided, and which the district court adopted, R. 11 (Mot. Hr’g Tr. at 19) (Page ID #135), is that the “privacy case” criteria may reveal an acknowledgment on the part of UPS that some information in the databases was “confidential information that shouldn’t be shared with all managerial employees throughout the country.” Id. at 16 (Page ID #132). Showing what UPS knew to be confidential and what it believed not to be confidential “provides context for determining whether discrimination has taken place.” Roadway Express II,
UPS argues in response that the EEOC’s request is overbroad because it “provides no temporal scope.” Appellant’s Br. at 23-24. However, the relevance of the “privacy case” criteria is not dependent on when UPS developed the criteria. Regardless of when UPS developed the criteria, this piece of evidence may provide insight into how UPS categorizes information as confidential. This is relevant to Matovski’s charge that UPS disclosed confidential medical information in violation of the ADA. Therefore, the EEOC shall have access to it. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-8(a).
[[Image here]]
Finally, although the bulk of UPS’s argument is focused on the relevance of the requested information, UPS also argues that the request is “unduly burdensome.” Appellant’s Br. at 11. It is true that courts “may not enforce an administrative subpoena unless the request seeks relevant material and is not unduly burdensome.” EEOC v. Ford Motor Credit Co.,
III. CONCLUSION
In light of the generous construction we give to “relevant” evidence, Roadway Express II,
Notes
. The EEOC withdrew the fourth and fifth requests after "UPS admitted that all managers in the country have access to [the report of its employees’ injuries].” R. 5 (Pl.’s Reply to Resp't's Resp. to the Appl. at 4) (Page ID #107).