Lack of authority: Virginia can’t enforce workplace safety rules on multi-state airport authority

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that Virginia cannot enforce its workplace safety laws against the airport authority responsible for managing Dulles and National airports.

The district court found that the authority’s existing regulations do not mention enforcing workplace safety laws in Virginia. The department argued on appeal that its police authority over the multistate entity includes enforcing safety laws.

U.S. District Court Judge Albert Diaz disagreed and affirmed the district court’s ruling.

“We agree with the Authority that by jointly forming the Authority with the District, Virginia has relinquished control of the Authority unless otherwise provided in the Agreement,” he said.

Diaz was joined by judges Pamela A. Harris and Toby J. Heytens Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority v. Mr. (VLW-024-2-184).

Airport authorities

In 1985, Virginia and the District of Columbia passed an agreement creating the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and giving it the authority to take over Dulles and National from the federal government. The authority was given broad, independent authority.

Congress then passed the Transfer Act, which transferred responsibility for the management of Dulles and National airports to the authority, recognized certain authorities granted to the authority jointly by Virginia and the District, and granted the police concurrent authorities with Virginia.

Authorities voluntarily complied with oversight and safety violation requests from the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry until 2016, when Virginia amended the Code. §40.1-2.1 impose fines for violations.

Accident at work

An authority employee injured his hand while performing maintenance on a fan in 2020. After an investigation, the department found the authority had violated Virginia safety laws and assessed a civil penalty of $26,094.

The authorities challenged the department’s authority to enforce those penalties in an administrative proceeding. A department arbitrator found that the authorities were subject to Virginia law; the department’s commissioner accepted the decision.

Authorities, seeking an injunction and declaratory judgment that they are not subject to Virginia’s regulations, sued the department’s Eastern District of Virginia.

Because the statute governing the authority was “silent regarding the states’ authority to enforce employment laws,” the district court held that Virginia “voluntarily waived its ability to unilaterally regulate (the authority’s) facilities” when it was created.

The department filed an appeal.

An unpreserved argument

The department said the Virginia police’s concurrent powers give it the ability to enforce workplace safety laws against authorities.

Diaz noted, however, that the arguments the department presented on appeal “were significantly different from those presented before the district court.”

“We believe this change is more than a ‘variation’ of the arguments presented in the district court, because the Department has never argued that the Agreement expressly granted it the authority to enforce the Virginia safety laws,” he said.

The judge was also unconvinced by the department’s suggestion that the case be left to proceed because “the district court ruled so.”

“The district court explained that, contrary to any mention of workplace safety regulations, the Agreement expressly ‘maintains (Virginia’s) concurrent regulatory authority alongside (the Office’s)’ in the area of ​​‘policing activities,’” Diaz wrote.

Calling it a “stretched interpretation of the court’s analysis,” he rejected the department’s contention that the district court misinterpreted the police powers argument by saying they applied only to criminal law enforcement.

Police power

The Transfer Act refers to the Virginia Police’s authority to control airports and defines that term independently of the definition of authority.

“Congress’ decision to bypass the Office in § 49111(c) suggests that it did not intend to grant Virginia broad authority in this regard,” Diaz wrote, rejecting the department’s suggestion that the granting of police authority extended to the Office’s conduct at the airport.

“Where Congress intended the provision to apply to both the ‘Metropolitan Washington airports’ and the Authorities, it used both terms,” the judge noted.

Similarly, the Virginia Code regarding police powers applied only to airports and specifically referred to the Transfer Act.

“The Virginia Supreme Court has understood that the granting of police authority under the Transfer Act allows Virginia to enforce its labor laws against private employers at airports,” Diaz said. “However, the fact that the police powers provision omits any reference to the Authority means that the Department cannot enforce its rules against the entity.”

The judge said Singleton v. International Association of Machinists, Loc. Lodge No. 1747 It is consistent with the court’s conclusion that the police powers statute cited here gives Virginia authority over the private companies operating at the airport, not the authorities themselves.

Virginia has original jurisdiction to apply its own law to establish liability for contracts and torts.

“However, the absence of a similar provision subjecting this issue to Virginia’s workplace safety regulations further suggests that the Compact has excluded this authority,” Diaz noted.

The Department suggested that the few provisions expressly exempting the agency from applying Virginia and District of Columbia law demonstrate that where the agreement purported to exclude Virginia law, it had expressly done so.

“But ‘redundancies are common in statutory drafting — sometimes in (legislative) efforts to be doubly sure, sometimes because of (legislative) inattention or lack of foresight, and sometimes simply because of the shortcomings of human communication,’” Diaz wrote. “In other words, sometimes ‘a better overall reading of a statute involves some redundancy.’”

Expropriation

The department argued it could enforce workplace safety laws against the state because nothing in the agreement precluded Virginia law.

Diaz said multijurisdictional entities like the authority “transfer part of the powers of a state to… an agency jointly created by several states” and “are not subject to unilateral control by any one state.”

The judge was persuaded by a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit that “because of the very nature of a bi-state entity, no state may enforce its rights against the entity, even with respect to activities within its borders, unless such authority is expressly provided for in a treaty.”

And the Supreme Court of the United States in Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann treated the issue of priority as a matter of interpretation of the agreement and proposed that there was no need to apply a “presumption against priority” because the states had agreed to the terms of the agreement.

Diaz similarly concluded that the department’s attempt to enforce Virginia’s safety laws against the authorities defeats the purpose of the agreement.