Natasha Alvarez, et al v. School Board of Miami-Dade County

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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Nos. 20-12448; 21-10704
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D.C. Docket No. 1:17-cv-22556-JEM
NATASHA ALVAREZ,
DIANE AUGUSTUS,
ESTELA ATALAY,
BRENT BOARDMAN,
TODD BOGART,
JANET CLINTON,
TREVOR COLESTOCK,
JOEL DELGADO,
DR. MARIA DIAZ-VICIEDO,
PAULA GAMBLE,
LOURDES GARCIA,
MARGARITA GUITERAS-MASSA,
MARGARET E. HAUN,
HEATHER HODSON,
MICHELLE JIMENEZ,
KENYA JONES ROBERTS,
ARTHUR S. KIANOFF,
CRAIG KIRK,
MARLEN V. LANZA,
RICK LAPWORTH,
DR. SHEILA MARTINEZ,
RICHARD MASSA,
TOMAS PENDOLA,
MARICE ANTOINETTE POWELL,
EDDA RIVERA,
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ALMA RODRIGUEZ,
MATTHEW ROMANO,
GINA SESE,
NATHAN SMITH,
ALMA TRINIDAD,
JOSE VEGA,
CHRISTINA WALKER,
BRIAN J. WHEELER,
DR. PATRICK WILLIAMS, et al.,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
versus
SCHOOL BOARD OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY,
Defendant - Appellee.
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Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
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(July 13, 2021)
Before MARTIN, ROSENBAUM, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.
MARTIN, Circuit Judge:
Natasha Alvarez and the other named plaintiffs are all teachers employed by
the Miami-Dade County School Board (“the School Board”). In 2012, Florida
enacted a law that reformed the way public school teachers are compensated. That
law requires school boards to adopt a “grandfathered” salary schedule for teachers
hired before the new compensation scheme became effective on July 1, 2014. The
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School Board adopted a salary schedule in 2013, but then adopted another in
November 2014 that it says is the grandfathered salary schedule for purposes of
this Florida statute. Ms. Alvarez and the other plaintiffs sued, arguing that the
November 2014 salary schedule cannot be the “grandfathered” schedule because it
came after July 1, 2014, and that the 2013 schedule should still govern their
compensation. The plaintiffs say this discrepancy violates their substantive and
procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United
States Constitution. After twice granting leave to amend, the District Court
dismissed their complaint with prejudice for failure to state a claim.
After careful consideration, and with the benefit of oral argument, we affirm
the District Court’s order.
I.
The appellants are all “instructional” employees (a statutorily defined
category of employees that includes teachers) who work for the School Board.1
Florida Statute § 447.309 requires Florida school boards to collectively bargain
with the labor union representing instructional employees about wages and other
matters laid out in the statute. Instructional employees are paid according to an
annual salary schedule agreed upon by the School Board and the union. Ms.
1 As this is a motion to dismiss, the facts are taken from the allegations in the operative
complaint (here, the Second Amended Complaint) and are presumed true. Alvarez v. U.S.
Immigr. and Customs Enf’t, 818 F.3d 1194, 1200 (11th Cir. 2016).
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Alvarez2 alleges that the process for adopting the salary schedule is legislative in
nature.
Florida Statute § 1012.22(1)(c)(4)(a) set a deadline of July 1, 2014, for
school boards to adopt a “grandfathered” salary schedule that would be “used as
the basis for paying all school employees hired before July 1, 2014.” The last
salary schedule the School Board adopted before that deadline was the 2013–2014
schedule adopted in November 2013. In November 2014, the School Board
adopted the 2014–2015 salary schedule as an addendum to the collective
bargaining agreement. Ms. Alvarez was not given an opportunity to object to the
adoption of the salary schedule until after the School Board adopted it. Ms.
Alvarez suffered financial loss as a result of the new salary schedules adopted after
July 1, 2014.
In July 2017, Ms. Alvarez filed a putative class action against the School
Board, challenging the Board’s adoption of the post-July 2014 salary schedules
through two federal and a number of state law claims. The District Court
dismissed the original complaint with leave to amend the federal claims and refile
the state law claims. Ms. Alvarez then filed an amended complaint raising
substantive and procedural due process claims against the School Board, as well as
a number of state law claims. Ms. Alvarez then moved for leave to file a second
2 We refer to the named plaintiffs collectively as “Ms. Alvarez.”
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amended complaint, which the District Court granted. The Second Amended
Complaint asserts the same violations of plaintiffs’ substantive and procedural due
process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the same state law
claims asserted in the First Amended Complaint, but raises a total of four due
process claims, splitting the counts between teachers hired before and teachers
hired after July 1, 2014.
The School Board moved to dismiss this action. The District Court granted
the motion, dismissing the federal claims with prejudice and declining to exercise
jurisdiction over the remaining state claims. Ms. Alvarez timely appealed.
II.
“We review de novo the district court’s grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion
to dismiss for failure to state a claim, accepting the complaint’s allegations as true
and construing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Chaparro v.
Carnival Corp., 693 F.3d 1333, 1335 (11th Cir. 2012) (per curiam) (quotation
marks omitted). To prevent dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6), a plaintiff must allege
sufficient facts to state a claim for relief that is “plausible on its face.” Bell Atl.
Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 1974 (2007). Claims are
plausible when the plaintiff pleads facts that allow the court “to draw the
reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009). A pleading
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must offer more than “labels and conclusions or a formulaic recitation of the
elements of a cause of action,” but “detailed factual allegations” are not needed.
Id. (quotation marks omitted).
III.
Ms. Alvarez argues that the School Board’s adoption of a salary schedule
after the July 1, 2014, deadline violates her federal constitutional rights in three
ways. First, she says that because the salary schedule the School Board adopted is
less remunerative than the prior schedule, it violates her state-created property
right to the compensation provided for in the pre-July 1, 2014, salary schedule.
Second, she says that it violates her fundamental right to contract. And finally, she
argues that the method the School Board used to adopt the post-July 1, 2014,
schedule violates her procedural due process rights. We address each in turn.
A. The District Court Properly Dismissed Ms. Alvarez’s Claim that the School
Board Violated Her Property Rights in the 2013–2014 Salary Schedule.
Ms. Alvarez argues that the School Board’s adoption of a less remunerative
salary schedule after the statutory deadline violates her state-created property right
to the compensation provided for in the pre-July 1, 2014, schedule. “Where an
individual’s state-created rights are infringed by legislative act, the substantive
component of the Due Process clause generally protects him from arbitrary and
irrational action by the government.” Lewis v. Brown, 409 F.3d 1271, 1273 (11th
Cir. 2005) (per curiam) (quotation marks omitted). The parties agree that the
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School Board’s adoption of salary schedules is a legislative act. But the District
Court found that the School Board had a rational basis for implementing the
November, 2014, salary schedule as the “grandfathered” schedule, namely:
engaging in collective bargaining with the teachers’ union. The District Court
therefore determined that there was no federal constitutional violation.
Ms. Alvarez insists that the District Court erred because a legislative act
cannot survive rational basis scrutiny when the School Board had no authority to
act as it did. In other words, Ms. Alvarez argues that when a state entity fails to
follow its own laws and rules in acting legislatively, its action is inherently
irrational. But this Court has been clear that when considering whether a state or
local government’s actions lack rational basis, there is no consideration of whether
that action violates state law. Corn v. City of Lauderdale Lakes, 997 F.2d 1369,
1389 (11th Cir. 1993) (“The fact that town officials are motivated by parochial
views of local interests . . . which may contravene state subdivision laws does not
state a claim of denial of substantive due process.” (quotation marks omitted and
alteration adopted)). The only question is whether the action is supported by a
rational basis. Id.
Plaintiffs rely heavily on Southern Cooperative Development Fund v.
Driggers, 696 F.2d 1347 (11th Cir. 1983), in support of their position. In Southern
Cooperative, this Court considered a county commission’s denial of a plat
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application submitted by a farming cooperative designed to allow low-income
families to run small farms. Id. at 1348. The development met all the criteria for
approval, but the commission voted against it after local outcry that the farm would
attract “low-income blacks and Spanish-Americans” to the “all-white community.”
Id. at 1349. In that case, the Court described its task as deciding “whether the
Commission’s actions were authorized as a matter of Florida law, and if so
whether their actions were in violation of the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.” Id. at 1351.
There are several problems with Ms. Alvarez’s reliance on Southern
Cooperative. First, Southern Cooperative addressed an executive action by a local
government, as opposed to a legislative one. Id. at 1351 (“The plaintiffs do not
challenge the exercise of legislative function[.]”) Second, contrary to plaintiffs’
characterization of Southern Cooperative, it decided only that the commission’s
actions violated Florida law and thus did not proceed to the Fourteenth
Amendment analysis. The Court considered Florida state court cases analyzing
plat approval processes and how much discretion local governments had to
approve or disapprove plat applications. Id. at 1352–56. Other than one reference
to the plaintiffs’ Fourteenth Amendment challenge at the beginning of the Court’s
discussion, Southern Cooperative never mentions rational basis review or engages
in any Fourteenth Amendment analysis. See id. at 1351–56. Southern Cooperative
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simply does not stand for the broad proposition that any state legislative act passed
in violation of existing state or municipal law violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
Nor do the other cases that plaintiffs cite in passing. Washington ex rel. Seattle
Title Trust Company v. Roberge, 278 U.S. 116, 49 S. Ct. 50 (1928), considered
whether a local ordinance itself violated the Fourteenth Amendment, not whether a
locality’s failure to abide by the ordinance was unconstitutional. Id. at 119–20, 49
S. Ct. at 51. And Hornsby v. Allen, 326 F.2d 605 (5th Cir. 1964)3 concerned the
denial of procedural due process rights by a state licensing regime (i.e. an
adjudicative, not a legislative, process) that failed to provide liquor license
applicants a hearing, notice of the objective standards according to which licenses
were adjudicated, and a reasoned decision explaining the basis for the denial. Id. at
610.4
Ms. Alvarez does not challenge the sufficiency of the reason the School
Board offered in support of its decision: complying with its obligation to
3 In Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc), we adopted as
binding precedent all decisions of the former Fifth Circuit handed down before October 1, 1981.
Id. at 1209.
4 Ms. Alvarez cites at least one more case that is even farther removed from the proposition she
seeks to support. See Charter Peachford Hosp., Inc. v. Bowen, 803 F.2d 1541, 1544 (11th Cir.
1986) (noting that a federal agency’s interpretation of its own regulation must be deferred to
unless “it is unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious or inconsistent with the statute.” (emphasis
added)).
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collectively bargain with the union. The District Court therefore did not err in
dismissing this claim.
B. The District Court Did Not Err in Dismissing Ms. Alvarez’s Right to
Contract Claim.
Ms. Alvarez also argues that the School Board’s failure to use the 2013
schedule as the “grandfathered” salary schedule violated her fundamental right to
contract. This is true, she says, both because the School Board departed from the
terms of the collectively bargained 2013 salary schedule and because it violated the
individual teachers’ right to a contract that compensated them according to that
schedule. She maintains that the correct standard for violations of the right to
contract is strict scrutiny, but argues that the School Board’s actions fail even
under rational basis review.
Ms. Alvarez cites caselaw for the proposition that a fundamental right to
contract exists, but fails to explain how the School Board’s actions implicate that
right. The School Board has not prevented Ms. Alvarez from contracting, nor has
it prevented the union from collectively bargaining on the teachers’ behalf.
Indeed, the School Board adopted the November 2014 salary schedule as a result
of that collective bargaining process. As the District Court put it, “[i]t can hardly
be said, then, that Plaintiffs were deprived of their right to contract regarding the
subsequent salary schedules when the very entity acting on their behalf engaged in
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the contractual collective bargaining process” that resulted in the new salary
schedule.
C. The District Court Did Not Err in Dismissing Ms. Alvarez’s Procedural Due
Process Claim.
Ms. Alvarez argues that the School Board violated her procedural due
process rights when it adopted the post-July 1, 2014, salary schedule through a
process that was “irregular” and “defective.” She points to three defects she says
deprived her of procedural due process: (1) she was not afforded an opportunity to
object to the salary schedule until after it was adopted; (2) the School Board failed
to use procedures required by state statute for adopting a collectively bargained for
agreement that conflicts with state law; and (3), the School Board failed to follow
state procedures for reducing all salary schedules proportionately in the event of a
funding shortfall.
When a government entity deprives someone of property through the
legislative process, as opposed to an adjudication, the aggrieved party is “not
entitled to procedural due process above and beyond that which already is provided
by the legislative process.” 75 Acres, LLC v. Miami-Dade Cnty., 338 F.3d 1288,
1293 (11th Cir. 2003). That is because “[w]hen the legislature passes a law which
affects a general class of persons, those persons have all received procedural due
process—the legislative process.” Id. at 1294 (quotation marks omitted).
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Ms. Alvarez insists that the adoption of the salary schedule is legislative in
nature. But she does not explain how the process here is somehow exempt from
the rule that legislative process is all the process that is due when property is
deprived legislatively. There is no indication that the School Board used a
different process when it adopted the November 2014 schedule than it did for any
other schedule, for example. And even if the School Board ran afoul of Florida
state statutes, Ms. Alvarez does not point to any authority that says this would
amount to a violation of procedural due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.
AFFIRMED.
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