Michael G. Holdiness v. A.M. Stroud, Jr.Michael G. Holdiness v. A.M. Stroud, Jr.
A former member of the National Guard, who was also employed as a civilian technician for the Guard, seeks to obtain damages from a number of his superior officers for alleged violation of his federal constitutional and statutory rights when he was barred from reenlisting, being thus involuntarily discharged from the Guard and from his employment as a civilian technician. Although his complaint invoked numerous bases for jurisdiction and asserted a number of separate claims, the district judge dismissed his suit for failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted in any respect. We affirm the judgment of the district court but modify it to make clear that the dismissal is without prejudice to the plaintiff’s right to seek judicial review of any action taken by the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records.
I. Facts As Set Forth by the Complaint
Because the suit was dismissed for failure of the complaint to state a claim for which relief can be granted, we recite the facts as alleged. Michael G. Holdiness was a military member of the Louisiana Army National Guard, Company D, 528 Engineering Battalion in Monroe, Louisiana, for approximately fourteen years before his involuntary discharge on February 27, 1983. He had been employed as a civilian technician under the National Guard Technician’s Act,
Holdiness’ immediate supervisor, Charles H. Dean, who was also a civilian technician and the general mechanic foreman for Company D, discriminatorily denied him promotions and gave him an arbitrarily low job evaluation report, a score of “61,” which, although acceptable, made him subject to transfer to Alexandria, Louisiana, which is more than 100 miles from his home. If Holdiness’ performance had been rated fairly, he would not have received a score that made him susceptible to being transferred. Dean’s actions were motivated by his dislike of Holdiness’ father and his desire to see Holdiness transferred to another Guard unit.
Holdiness attempted to appeal his performance evaluation through administrative channels, but various other National Guard officials, who are also named as defendants, retaliated because he had the
Holdiness’ father died after Holdiness had received his poor performance rating and before he was dismissed.
After he had been barred from reenlisting and his civilian employment had been terminated, Holdiness filed this suit, relying on
Holdiness appeals only the dismissal of those defendants who were considered federal employees by the district court, Dean, his immediate supervisor; Captain Phillip L. Arthur, a civilian technician supervisor; Colonel Gerard A.M. Mumphrey, the Guard’s Director of Manpower Management; and Major General A.M. Stroud, Jr., the officer in charge of civilian technicians and the man who had responded to the Louisiana State Senator’s intercession by writing the Governor of Louisiana. As we have noted, Holdiness has invoked a variety of constitutional and statutory bases for relief, casting a tangled net of claims. Separating their strands, we examine each individually to determine whether any is strong enough to retain the defendants.
II. Status of the National Guard
The constitution empowers Congress “to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of Training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.” 3
As the Supreme Court related in Maryland v. United States:
From the days of the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord until just before World War I, the various militias embodied the concept of a citizen army, but lacked the equipment and training necessary for their use as an integral part of the reserve force of the United States Armed Forces. 4
The National Defense Act of 1916 materially altered the status of the militias by constituting them the National Guard. Pursuant to the power vested in Congress
“The basic structure of the 1916 Act has been preserved to the present day.” 6 The National Guard is today, therefore, an integral part of this country’s military structure. It is “[a]n essential reserve component of the Armed Forces of the United States, available with regular forces in time of war.” 7
III.
Whether Holdiness has stated a claim for which relief might be granted under
A. State Action
This circuit, like other federal circuits, has several times reviewed the attempts of Guard personnel to invoke judicial aid. The state-national character of the Guard as well as the requirements of
In
NeSmith v.
Fulton,
8
we held that the Adjutant General of a state is “at least in part a state officer.” Relying on
Davis v. Vandiver,
9
we said that, although the National Guard Technician’s Act confers federal status on civilian technicians “while granting administrative authority to
State
officials, headed in each state by the Adjutant General,”
10
by virtue of the hybrid character of the Guard, the Adjutant General is, at least for some purposes, simultaneously a federal agent. A charge that the Adjutant General deprived a member of the Guard of his constitutional or federal statutory rights, therefore, satisfies the state action requirement of
In addition to suing the Adjutant General, NeSmith also sued various Guard members, including a captain in his Air National Guard squadron, the Personnel Officer for the Guard, the Commanding Officer of his squadron, and the chief of central base administration of his fighter wing. In
NeSmith
we held that the actions of such officers must be considered state action for at least some purposes, because “in removing NeSmith from his civilian technician position, the defendant adjutant general
and the other defendants, as his agents,
acted sufficiently un
The district court, therefore, was in error in holding that, as a matter of law, the four federal defendants were not amenable to suit under
B. Justiciability
Whether
Mindes had alleged, inter alia, that the proceedings against him violated due process but we did not further evaluate these charges and expressed no opinion about whether his specific claims would, if proved, constitute a denial of a constitutional right, saying only that his “allegations, in toto, are sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss at the pleading stage.” We did, however, set forth factors for the district court to consider in deciding when federal court should review a decision by the “military establishment.” 15 We wrote: 16
A district court faced with a sufficient allegation [of deprivation of a constitutional right] must examine the substance of that allegation in light of the policy reasons behind nonreview of military matters. In making that examination, such of the following factors as are present must be weighed (although not necessarily in the order listed).
1. The nature and strength of the plaintiffs challenge to the military determination. Constitutional claims, normally more important than those having only a statutory or regulatory base, are themselves unequal in the whole scale of values — compare haircut regulation questions to those arising in court-martial situations which raise issues of personal liberty. An obviously tenuous claim of any sort must be weighted in favor of declining review.
2. The potential injury to the plaintiff if review is refused.
3. The type and degree of anticipated interference with the military function. Interference per se is insufficient since there will be some interference when review is granted, but if the interference would be such as to seriously impede the military in the performance of vital duties, it militates strongly against relief.
4. The extent to which the exercise of military expertise or discretion is involved. Courts should defer to the superior knowledge and experience of professionals in matters such as promotions or orders directly related to specific military functions.
The
Mindes
opinion considered the availability of administrative remedies relevant in determining whether federal judicial portals were open to such suits, although, of course, the Supreme Court’s ruling in
Pat
In 1983, more than a decade after we decided Mindes, the Supreme Court first considered whether a federal judicial forum was available to adjudicate claims arising from intraservice injuries in the regular military service. In Chappell v. Wallace, 20 the Court held that enlisted military personnel may not pursue Bivens-type suits to recover damages for the violations of their constitutional right to equal protection of the law as a result of discrimination against them because of their race. 21
This circuit applied
Chappell
to the due process and equal protection claims of Guard members in
Crawford v. Texas Army National Guard
22
holding that
Accordingly, we follow
Crawford
in applying the
Chappell
rule to Guard members and, using the tests in
Chappell
and
Mindes,
hold that the remedy sought by Holdiness would be so disruptive to military service that the claim should not be entertained by the federal courts. We affirm the district court ruling that the complaint does not state a claim for which relief can be granted under
C. Liberty or Property
For completeness we note another deficency in the complaint.
In Walker v. Alexander, 29 we considered whether a Guard officer, who was also employed as a civilian technician, possessed a constitutionally protected property right to be retained in active military service in the Guard, a status on which his civilian employment was contingent. Without applying the Mindes tests, we held that the Guard member’s asserted interest was not a property right in the constitutional sense and that his civilian-technician status did not “change the quality of the right or the expectancy of the officer to continue in his position for purposes of demonstrating the existence of a property right.” 30
Holdiness did not lose his position as a technician until his enlistment as a military member of the Guard expired. He did not have a property or liberty interest protected by the due process clause in continued military service in the National Guard,
31
nor did he have a constitutionally protected right to re-enlist.
32
Thus, he has failed to allege injury to a constitutionally protected liberty or property interest when his status as a military member of the Guard was terminated. Because Congress has mandated that a technician be discharged if his military enlistment expires, Holdiness has also failed to state a
IV. Section 1985
Plaintiffs who assert claims under
Holdiness’ complaint fails to satisfy this pleading requirement sufficiently to assert a claim under any of the subsections of
Considering each subsection of
The
V. Federal Torts Claims Act
The Federal Torts Claims Act was amended in 1981 to extend protection to “members of the National Guard while engaged in training or duty under section 316, 502, 503, 504, or 505 of Title 32.” 39 This provision makes the government liable for the conduct of civilian technicians employed by the Guard. 40 The only proper defendant in a suit under the Act, however, is the United States. 41 The Federal Torts Act claim against the individual defendants was, therefore, properly dismissed.
VI. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents
The Supreme Court in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents 42 found sanction for a damage suit against federal officials whose actions violate an individual’s constitutional rights even though Congress had not expressly authorized such suits. The Court has, however, consistently cautioned that this implied remedy is not available in the presence of “special factors counselling hesitation.” 43 In Chappell, 44 the Court found that “the need for special regulations in relation to military discipline, and the consequent need and justification of a special and exclusive system of military justice” mitigated against permitting enlisted military personnel to maintain a damage suit against a superior officer for alleged violation of their constitutional rights in failing to assure them desirable duties, threatening them, giving them low performance evaluations, and denying them equal protection of the laws by imposing unusually severe penalties on them because of their race.
The Eleventh Circuit in
Stanley v. United
States,
45
did not read
Chappell
as establishing a
per se rule
prohibiting suits by military personnel against their superiors to recover damages for constitutional viola
This Court has never held, nor do we now hold, that military personnel are barred from all redress in civilian courts for constitutional wrongs suffered in the course of military service. 46
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Civilian courts must at the very least hesitate long before entertaining a suit which asks the court to tamper with the established relationship between enlisted military personnel and their superior officers [because] that relationship is at the heart of the necessarily unique structure of the military establishment. 47
The majority of courts to consider the question, however, have reached the opposite conclusion. 48
It is unnecessary for the purpose of deciding this case for us to express any opinion concerning the Stanley interpretation. Like Chappell’s contentions, Holdiness’ claims present a situation in which military decision making “would be undermined by a judicially created remedy exposing officers to personal liability at the hands of those they are charged to command.” 49 Moreover, like the plaintiffs in Chappell, and unlike those in Stanley, Holdiness may resort to intramilitary administrative procedures to redress his complaints. 50
The district court therefore properly dismissed Holdiness’ Bivens claims.
VII. State Law Claims
Judicial review of a claim for damages asserted on the basis of state law would constitute no less an unwarranted intrusion into the military personnel structure than the entertainment of claims founded in
VIII. Administrative Remedy
As we have previously noted, Holdiness is not left without any remedy if his rights indeed have been violated. Unlike the plaintiff in Mindes,
52
he has not availed himself of his right to review from the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records. The Board, established by Congress pursuant to
Notes
.
.
.
.
.
New Jersey Air Nat'l Guard v. Federal Labor Relations Authority,
.
Maryland v. United States,
.
Gilligan
v.
Morgan,
.
.
.
NeSmith v. Fulton,
.
Id.,
. Id. (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
.
.
Id.,
. See also West v. Brown,
.
Mindes,
.
.
.
Mollnow
v.
Carlton,
.
.
See Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics,
.
.
Jorden v. National Guard Bureau,
.
Brown v. United States,
.
Martelon v. Temple,
.
.
.
Baker v. McCollan,
.
.
Id.,
.
Walker v. Alexander,
.
Gant v. Binder,
.
Kush v. Rutledge,
.
See, e.g., Jewell v. City of Covington,
.
Yglesias v. Gulf Stream Park Racing Ass'n,
.
Kush,
.
See Zernial v. United States,
.
See Lowe v. Letsinger,
.
.
See Proprietors Ins. Co. v. United States,
.
Mars
v.
Hanberry,
.
.
Id.,
. Supra.
.
.
Chappell,
.
Chappell,
.
See Jorden v. National Guard Bureau,
.
Chappell,
.
See Carlson v. Green,
.
See Trerice v. Pedersen,
. Mindes v. Seaman, supra.
.
See Navas v. Gonzalez Vales,
.
Jorden,
.
Geyen v. Marsh,
.
.
See also Crawford,