Case Study Presentation (Chapter 4 Page 104)
Corey Airport Services Inc. versus Clear Channel Outdoor Inc.
The deciding court was the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Case decided on June 4, 2012
The events of this case began when the City of Atlanta issued a request for proposal for a five-year contract at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in 2002. The lease arrangement envisioned in the request for proposal involved the winning bidder managing hundreds of advertising displays at one of the world’s busiest airports with a guaranteed portion of the revenue remitted to the city.
Before the 2002 proposal, Defendant Clear Channel Outdoor in partnership with Defendant Barbara Fouch held the advertising concession through a month-to-month contract. Fouch had been awarded the contract by the City without entering into a competitive bidding process, and Clear Channel became Fouch’s partner by purchasing the ownership interest of Fouch’s previous business partner. The existing month-to-month contract guaranteed fifty percent of advertising revenue to the City, but the request for proposal required bid proponents to commit to paying at least sixty percent of their advertising revenue to the City.
Three companies submitted proposals to the City as part of the bid process, the obligatory team of Clear Channel and Fouch was the top finisher. Plaintiff Corey Airport Services, Inc. finished in second place. After Corey failed to secure the contract, Corey filed an administrative bid protest. This protest was initially denied; Corey appealed the denial, but later abandoned the appeal after obtaining an evidentiary hearing. Corey then filed the present civil action against Clear Channel, Fouch, and certain city employees.
Some of Corey’s claims were dismissed at summary judgment, and in an earlier appeal ordered that summary judgment be granted on qualified immunity grounds to individual city employees. The district court then permitted the section 1983 conspiracy claim against Clear Channel and Fouch to proceed to a jury. Corey’s theory of the case was that the City unlawfully treated Clear Channel and Fouch favorably and Corey unfavorably in the bidding process and that the different treatment was based on Clear Channel and Fouch being “political insiders” whereas Corey was a “political outsider.” Corey also contended that Defendants conspired with the City in support of this deprivation of Corey’s supposed equal protection rights.
The jury returned a verdict and Corey won on all claims, awarding millions of dollars in damages. Before the verdict, Defendants filed motions for judgment as a matter of law. These motions were changed under the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure after the jury returned its verdict. Defendants also filed motions for a new trial, but the district court denied the post-trial motions.
Underlying Corey’s conspiracy claim against Defendants is its allegation that the city violated Corey’s equal protection rights by selecting Defendants’ bid for the airport advertising contract after conducting a biased bid process. Without an underlying violation of equal protection, no valid conspiracy claim can be shown in this case; and judgment as a matter of law must be granted to Defendants.
Equal protection jurisprudence is typically concerned with governmental classification and treatment that affects some discrete and identifiable group of citizens differently from other groups. Defining an “identifiable group” that has been discriminated against is critical to establishing a claim under the Equal Protection Clause. Absent the existence of a discrete and identifiable group to which Corey belonged and which the City treated in a discriminatory, prejudicial manner during the bid process, no valid equal protection claim exists in this case.
Throughout the proceedings before the district court and on appeal, Corey offered several proposed definitions for the identifiable group to which it belonged that was targeted by the City. While the proposed definitions differ in their words, Corey essentially attempts to identify itself as a member of a group of biffers who were not “politically connected” to the City or to influential persons in City government and who were bidders that lost the bid based on this status.
Corey’s proposed group definitions fail to support a claim under the Equal Protection Clause. For a group to qualify properly as identifiable for the purposes of an Equal Protection Clause claim, substantive group characteristics must pop out that allow us to separate readily entities or people into discrete groupings and clearly identify those persons that suffered the alleged discrimination and those persons that did not. Many substantive characteristics of this kind exist that allow for separation of entities or people into discrete groupings and that could potentially support an Equal Protection Clause claim. Groups based on race, sex, or even longer-term and discrete political affiliation (Such as Republican as opposed to non-Republican or Democrat as opposed to non-Democrat) all potentially allow courts to identify clearly the parties involved, separate the parties into strongly defined groupings, and discern the existence of an identifiable group whose members may have suffered discrimination.
Corey does not offer sufficient substantive group characteristics. Instead, Corey attempts to identify groups based on alliliation or connection to the City, the supposed discriminator: “insiders” and “outsiders.” This vague category is inadequate because these idea-based characteristics do not allow us to separate readily people and entities into discrete groupings, a necessary part of identifying the group that suffered the alleged discrimination. The proposed categories are too loose, too shifting to be useful to courts.
No objective criteria plainly fix whether a person or entity is an “insider” or an “outsider.” “Insiders” and “outsiders” do not bear immutable characteristics. Furthermore, unlike with political parties or other longer-term voluntary group affiliations, they do not even have to declare or register themselves as members of their respective grouping. The most one can hope for in separating persons based on such subjective criteria like “insiders” and “outsiders” based virtually on friendship with government officials, would be a spectrum or a fuzzy series of exclusively indeterminate and overlapping groups each of which would be inadequate to qualify as identifiable for purposed of the Protection Clause claim.
Stripped of its “insider” and “outsider” labels, Corey’s effort at group identification stands solely on this substantive group characteristic: all members lost the airport-advertising bid. In reality, Corey is defining the class discriminated against as simply the group of individuals allegedly unfairly treated by Defendants, a kind of redundant comparing of cause and effect. This alone cannot support properly an Equal Protection Clause claim. For a group to qualify properly as identifiable for purposes of a group-based discrimination claim, the group must be identifiable by some common set of traits that reach beyond simply not having been selected for a benefit or sharing a desire to do something which the allegedly discrimination party does not want them to do. The class for a class-based claim for equal protection purposes cannot be defined solely as those persons who suffered at the hands of the supposed discriminator.
This notion is especially true in the context of discretionary government activity. Every government-run bid process involves winners and losers; selection of a winner inherently involves a kind if discrimination in itself. If the law allowed groups defined basically as the “bid-losers” to be the bases for this claim, every government bid process with winners and losers would theoretically support such protection claims.
The letting of municipal contracts out not regularly be the start of a federal case. Federal courts are not intended to be the constant overlords of government contracts. Governments must have more leeway than that in conducting bid processes for their contracts. We conclude that the law will not allow a group-based Equal Protection Clause claim premised on allegedly discriminatory acts taken in the context of a government bid process to proceed where the sole substantive characteristic shared by those in the supposed group is that they all lost the bid, even if it is true that the loss was based on subjective and arbitrary factors.
The Plaintiffs conspiracy claims fail against Defendants because the underlying proposed equal protection claim fails, lacking the sufficient identifiable group required. Therefore they concluded that the facts and inferences in this case point overwhelmingly favor the Defendants and they vacated (overturned) the districts court’s post-verdict order denying judgment as a matter of love and remanded with instructions that judgment as a matter of law be entered for Defendants. (Case goes back to trial court to decide the case again using the rulings of the appellate court as a new guide)
This case is significant and placed where it is in the textbook because it explains in further detail the Equal Protection Clause. The clause has come to mean that governments must treat people equally. However, equal protection does not extend to all government activities. Some actions by the government that discriminate are held to tougher standards than others, such as this case. Claims of violation of protection are strongest when they involved sex or race discrimination, but these constitutional protections are due all persons and businesses. Claims of equal protection violation, like claims of due process violation, are common. How the issue is raised in a business setting is shown during Corey Airport Services vs Clear Channel Outdoor. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education was a momentous case in getting the ball rolling toward full and equal citizenship for all Americans regardless of their race. Back then, Brown was right despite the fact that at the time of its passage the Equal Protection Clause was not understood to prohibit segregation. Over time, it has changed as new issues arise such as equal rights for the same-sex marriage cases and countless other issues the LGTB community, as well as many others, face today. I think the rule of law will continue to evolve as it has over the past 61 years.