Jack Edward Tanner

This case was a class action Title VII lawsuit brought by two unions on behalf of about 15,500 state employees in job classifications that were 70% or more female against the State of Washington, alleging that the state's compensation system discriminated on the basis of sex. After bifurcated proceedings on liability, injunctive relief, and back pay, the district court certified the class and ruled for the plaintiffs, finding that the state's pay practices violated Title VII. The court determined that injunctive relief and back pay were appropriate to remedy the sex-based disparities in compensation.

civil rightslabor & employment

The case concerned whether individuals employed by the Panama Canal Commission after the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty were exempt from U.S. federal income taxes on wages earned from that work and thus entitled to a refund for taxes paid in 1979. The court held that no such exemption applied, denied the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, and granted the government's motion, dismissing the suit. The core reasoning was that Article XV of the Agreements in Implementation of the Panama Canal Treaty exempts the Commission and its employees only from Panamanian taxes, not U.S. taxes; treaties are the supreme law of the land, but the provision's text, the State Department's analysis, and the negotiating history show the U.S. did not intend to waive its sovereign taxing power over its citizens.

taxesfederal power

This case concerned a dispute over ownership of two parcels of land comprising the bed of the Puyallup River within the boundaries of the Puyallup Indian Reservation, with the tribe claiming beneficial ownership held in trust by the United States and the Port of Tacoma asserting title passed to the state. The court granted the tribe's petition to quiet title, holding that the United States conveyed beneficial ownership of the riverbed to the Puyallup Tribe through the 1854-1855 Treaty of Medicine Creek and the 1857 Executive Order, and continues to hold the land in trust. The decision rested on the absence of any clear intent in the governing documents to reserve the riverbed for the United States or future states, application of the presumption against conveyance of navigable waters only when intent is plainly stated, and analysis of river channel changes under Washington law as accretive rather than avulsive. The court distinguished prior Puyallup cases focused on fishing rights and concluded the riverbed did not pass to Washington upon statehood in 1889.

propertycivil rights