Michael Showalter (Independent) has posted Palmer v. Amazon: A Case Study in Textualism and the Fixed-Meaning Canon (Wake Forest Law Review online, forthcoming) (16 pages) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
As in many states, the New York Workers’ Compensation statute provides that an employer’s obligation to pay workers’ compensation “shall be exclusive” and “in place of any other liability whatsoever” to an employee. All agree that the provision bars workplace-injury claims for monetary relief, but whether the provision additionally bans claims for injunctive relief—whether the word "liability" encompasses injunctions—is contested. The Second Circuit recently held in Palmer v. Amazon that the provision does not preclude employees for suing their employers for injunctive relief because (in the court’s view) being enjoined does not make an employer "liable."
While that conclusion may hold intuitive appeal to modern readers engulfed in modern language usage, it is indefensible as a matter of original meaning. The evidence of original meaning is overwhelming—when the statute was enacted in 1914, "liability" unambiguously encompassed injunctive relief. The Second Circuit reached the contrary conclusion by ignoring the evidence.
Because the relevant statutory language involves an extraordinarily consequential difference between original meaning and modern meaning, Palmer highlights the importance of the fixed-meaning canon. By fixing statutory meaning at the time of enactment, the canon anchors case outcomes to the law actually passed. When later generations apply legal provisions by reference to modern language usage, by contrast, they are applying a different law—one that the legislature never adopted. That’s what the Second Circuit did here: by substituting its own modern understanding of the word "liability" for that word’s original meaning, the court effectively amended the statute to impose a set of rights and obligations different than what the enacted statute imposes.
I take no position on the policy result, but the legislature wrote the statute it wrote. Any policy suboptimality should be resolved through the legislative process, not by judicial fiat. The New York Court of Appeals should correct the Second Circuit’s error when the opportunity arises, and other courts should take care to avoid replicating the error whether in the workers-compensation context or elsewhere.
Posted at 6:06 AM