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By
Monica Guizar
Employment Policy Attorney
In a case in which the plaintiffs had filed
civil rights actions against the defendants, a federal court in the
state of Washington has granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a protective
order preventing the disclosure of their (or their spouses’, children’s,
relatives’ and assistants’) immigration status, Social Security numbers
and tax returns; and the court denied the defendants’ motion compelling
disclosure of that information.
The plaintiffs had filed the civil rights
actions against the defendants as individuals and in their official
capacities as government employees, as well as the town of Mattawa.
During the discovery phase of the litigation, the plaintiffs filed a
motion for a protective order to prevent the defendants from inquiring
into their immigration status, Social Security numbers, and tax returns
and from obtaining similar information about their spouses, children,
relatives and assistants. The defendant town of Mattawa filed a motion
to compel the disclosure of this very information.
The defendants argued that it was necessary
to know the plaintiffs’ immigration status because that information
would be relevant for the jury to assess the credibility of the
plaintiffs, since the decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v.
NLRB, 535 U.S. 137 (2002), precluded the plaintiffs, if they were
undocumented, from claiming lost income in the civil rights action, and
because it could show that the investigation of the plaintiffs was based
on “legitimate police concerns of criminal conduct. (For a summary of
the decision in Hoffman, see “Supreme
Court Bars Undocumented Worker from Receiving Back Pay Remedy for
Unlawful Firing,” Immigrants’
Rights Update, Apr. 12, 2002.)
The court dismissed the defendants’
arguments and granted the plaintiffs’ protective order, finding that
immigration status was not relevant to the lawsuit and that Hoffman
did not require disclosure of immigration status. In coming to this
conclusion, the court in the present case noted that it was similar to
the lawsuit in Rivera v. NIBCO, Inc., 364 F.3d 1057 (9th Cir.
2004), in which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the
Hoffman decision did not apply in a civil rights action brought by
an employee seeking back pay for work already performed and was not an
action under the National Labor Relations Act, Hoffman was. In
its analysis, the court also cited to Galaviz-Zamora v. Brady Farms,
Inc., 230 F.R.D. 499 (W.D. Mich. 2005) (for more information on
Galaviz-Zamora, see “Federal
Court in Michigan Grants Protective Order Prohibiting Inquiry into
Plaintiffs’ Immigration Status,”
IRU, Dec. 22, 2005) and
EEOC v. BICE of Chicago, 229 F.R.D. 581 (N.D. Ill. 2005).
The court also denied disclosure of
immigration status, as the Rivera court did, because of the
chilling effect that disclosing immigration status would have on similar
civil rights actions. (For more on Rivera v. NIBCO, Inc., 364
F.3d 1057, 1064 (9th Cir. 2004), see “9th Circuit
Upholds Protective Order Limiting Employers’ Inquiries into Plaintiffs’
Immigration Status,”
IRU, June 18, 2004). Finally, the court noted that any relevance
that the plaintiffs’ immigration status might have on credibility was
outweighed by the damage and prejudicial effect that disclosure of that
information would have on them. The court denied disclosure of the
plaintiffs’ Social Security numbers for the same reasons that the court
found immigration status to be protected from disclosure.
In making its decision about whether the
plaintiffs should be required to disclose their tax returns, the court
conducted a two-pronged analysis by looking at (1) whether the tax
returns were relevant to the lawsuit, and (2) whether there was a
compelling need for the tax returns to be disclosed because the
information contained in them is not readily available elsewhere. The
court first found that the tax returns were relevant only as to three of
the plaintiffs who were seeking lost income damages. Next, it examined
whether there was another way the defendants could obtain the
information contained in the tax returns. Because the plaintiffs
expressed their willingness to provide additional information and
documentation about their income and expenses, the court found that the
defendants indeed had access to the information they sought from a
source other than the tax returns, and held that there was no compelling
need for the plaintiffs to disclose their federal tax returns.
De La O, et al, v. Robin Arnold-Williams, et al,
2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76816 (E.D. Wash. Oct. 20, 2006).
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