An opinion from the US Supreme Court on March 26.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for the Women’s March
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Jemal Countess/Getty Images for the Women’s March
An opinion from the US Supreme Court on March 26.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for the Women’s March
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday made it easier for workers to file employment discrimination lawsuits for job transfers based on sex, race, religion or national origin.
At issue was a question that has given rise to numerous conflicting rulings in lower courts over what constitutes unlawful employment transfer discrimination.
The High Court’s response on Wednesday was that an employee must prove that there has been harm, but that it is not necessary to show that harm is “significant” or “material.”
The case before the court was illustrative. The case was filed by Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow, a police sergeant who claimed she was transferred from her plainclothes police job in the intelligence section of the St. Louis Police Department because she was a woman. Muldrow worked in the Intelligence Division from 2008 to 2017, investigating cases of public corruption and human trafficking. She also oversaw the gang unit, served as chief of the gun crimes unit and was assigned as an FBI task force officer.
Despite high job evaluations, a new unit commander arranged for his transfer out of the Intelligence Division. He notably justified this transfer by emphasizing that the work of the division was “very dangerous”. Despite her objections, Muldrow was reassigned to a uniformed position in the department’s Fifth District, where she oversaw the activities of neighborhood patrol officers — approving arrests, reviewing reports and handling other administrative matters.
Although his salary and rank remained the same, Muldrow sued the police department, claiming the transfer caused him harm. Because she was no longer in the Intelligence Division, she lost her FBI status and the car that came with it, and in her new job, Muldrow often had to work nights and weekends, instead of the Monday-Friday work week in which she worked. the intelligence unit.
A federal district court judge ruled in favor of the police department, without a trial, and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Muldrow’s transfer, stating that because she could show no ” reduction in his title, salary or benefits,” his claims of discrimination were not “significant.”
But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court reversed that decision and set out a stricter standard that lower courts can use to determine whether a discrimination claim based on changed terms of employment can proceed.
The decision was unanimous, but the reasoning was not.
Speaking for the six-member majority, Justice Elena Kagan said the federal law prohibiting employment discrimination includes a ban not only on economic discrimination; it includes a prohibition on discrimination in the “terms” and “conditions” of employment. Kagan said this covers a transfer that changed “nothing less than the what, where and when of (Muldrow’s) police work.” »
While the 8th Circuit and some other courts have required such discrimination claims to demonstrate “substantial” or “material” harm, the Supreme Court has said the bar is too high. The anti-discrimination law “targets practices that ‘treat a person worse’” because of their sex, race, religion or national origin, the court said.
Explaining why this higher threshold is necessary, Kagan said that “the question of whether the harm is significant” turns out to be “in the eye of the beholder.” And to prove her point, she cited examples that lower courts have ruled not significant:
- an engineering technician is assigned to a new job – in a 14-foot by 22-foot wind tunnel;
- a maritime transport worker is transferred to a position involving only night work;
- and a school principal is moved to a non-school administrative role overseeing fewer employees.
In each of these sex or race discrimination cases, the lower courts found that there was no “significant” harm to the conditions of employment.
However, this is “not the right standard,” Kagan explained. Rather, if an employee can demonstrate harm because of their gender, race, religion, or national origin, that is sufficient. “If Congress had wanted to limit liability for job transfers to those who cause significant disadvantage, it could have done so,” Kagan wrote, adding that the court “cannot make that judgment” by rewriting the law.
Three justices – Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh – wrote opinions concurring with the result but not with the reasoning.
Alito’s was the most extraordinary. “I disagree with the Court’s unhelpful view,” he wrote, adding of his reasoning: “I have no idea what that means.”
Justice Thomas picked a few legal points with the majority opinion, but ultimately acknowledged that it is “unlikely” that the 8th Circuit had a sufficiently “strict” standard in mind.
And Justice Kavanaugh wrote that he favored a different, less complicated approach. If a job transfer is based on sex, race, religion, or national origin, it is discriminatory, period, whether or not it causes concrete harm. That said, he acknowledged that the court’s “new requirement of some harm appears to be a relatively low bar” that should be easily met for anyone transferred based on gender, race, religion or nationality. national origin.
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