## Facts

- Black firefighters and a local NAACP branch sued the City of Birmingham and the Jefferson County Personnel Board alleging racially discriminatory hiring and promotion practices under Title VII and other federal law.
- The earlier litigation ended in federal district court consent decrees setting hiring and promotion goals favoring Black firefighters.
- White firefighters later sued the same governmental defendants, alleging they were denied promotions because promotion decisions favored less qualified Black candidates pursuant to the consent decrees.
- The district court dismissed the white firefighters’ claims as an impermissible collateral attack on the consent decrees, reasoning they were precluded despite not being parties to the earlier suits.
- The Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding nonparties were not barred from bringing their discrimination claims.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether the later suit could be precluded.

## Issues

1. Whether employees who were not parties to earlier Title VII litigation resolved by consent decrees can be precluded from later challenging employment decisions taken pursuant to those decrees.
2. Whether nonparties’ knowledge of the earlier litigation and opportunity to intervene justifies treating their later claims as barred collateral attacks.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the Eleventh Circuit in a 5–4 decision.
- Nonparties to the earlier consent decree actions were not bound by those judgments and could pursue their own discrimination claims challenging actions taken under the decrees.
- The Court rejected a rule requiring affected nonparties to intervene in the original litigation to preserve later claims.
- The case was allowed to proceed on the merits rather than being dismissed on preclusion grounds.

## Legal Principles

- A person is not bound by a judgment in personam in litigation to which they were not made a party through proper process; nonparty preclusion is disfavored absent recognized exceptions (e.g., privity or representative litigation).
- Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, parties seeking a judgment that will bind absent persons must use joinder (including mandatory joinder when applicable), not rely on permissive intervention by those absent persons.
- The “impermissible collateral attack” concept does not bar independent statutory claims by strangers to a consent decree merely because the claims implicate actions taken to comply with that decree.
- Mere awareness of earlier litigation or a consent decree does not impose a duty to intervene and does not, by itself, create preclusion against later independent claims.
- Policy interests favoring settlement and enforcement of civil-rights consent decrees do not override the ordinary limits on binding nonparties through res judicata and procedural rules governing joinder and intervention.

## Conclusion

The Court held that white firefighters who were not parties to earlier Title VII consent decrees could not be precluded from later suing over employment decisions made under those decrees, reaffirming that binding effects of judgments generally do not extend to nonparties and that joinder, not mandatory intervention, is the mechanism for securing such binding effect.


Martin v. Wilks, 490 U.S. 755 (1989)