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 changes based on gender, race, religion or national origin.
At issue is the question of what constitutes unlawful discrimination with respect to job transfers, a question that has resulted in many conflicting decisions in lower courts.
The high court's response Wednesday was that employees must show some harm, but do not have to prove “substantial” or “significant” harm.
The case before the court was an example. The document comes from police sergeant Tonya Clayborn Muldrow, who claims she was transferred to a plainclothes police officer in the St. Louis Police Department's Intelligence Unit because she was a woman. Muldrow worked for the Intelligence Unit from 2008 to 2017 investigating public corruption and human trafficking cases. She also oversaw the Gang Unit, served as head of the Firearms Crimes Unit, and was appointed as a task force officer for the FBI.
Despite her high employment rating, the new unit commander engineered her transfer from the Intelligence Service. Among other things, he justified the transfer by noting that her department's work was “extremely dangerous.” Despite her objections, Muldrow was reassigned to a uniformed position in the Police Department's 5th District, where she oversaw the activities of nearby patrol officers, including approving arrests, reviewing reports and handling other administrative matters.
Although her salary and position were the same, Muldrow sued the police department, claiming she suffered damages as a result of the transfer. Because she was no longer part of the intelligence branch, she lost her FBI position and the vehicle that came with it, and in her new job, Muldrow often had to work nights and weekends instead of the Monday through Friday hours she had previously worked. 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, saying her argument was that she could not show “a decrease in rank, salary or benefits.” declared. Discrimination did not “matter.”
But the Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned that ruling and established a stricter test that lower courts can use to determine whether discrimination claims based on changes in employment terms and conditions can go to trial.
The decision was unanimous, but the reasoning was not.
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the six-judge majority, said federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination include not only economic discrimination; This includes prohibiting discrimination regarding the “terms” and “terms” of employment, Kagan said, as well as transfers that change “what, where and when.” [Muldrow’s] “It’s a police thing.”
The 8th Circuit and some other courts have required such discrimination claims to show “substantial” or “material” harm, but the Supreme Court said that's too high a bar. Anti-discrimination laws target practices that “treat people worse” because of their gender, race, religion or national origin, the court said.
Explaining why this higher bar is needed, Kagan said that whether “the harm is serious” is “in the eye of the beholder.” And to prove that point, she cited an example from a lower court. ~ no important:
- Engineering technicians are assigned to a new job site in a 14-by-22-foot wind tunnel.
- A transportation worker is transferred to a position that only performs night work.
- School principals will be moved to non-school-based administrative roles where they will oversee a smaller number of staff.
In each gender or race discrimination case, lower courts found no “material” harm to terms and conditions of employment.
But that's “the wrong standard,” Kagan explained. Rather, if an employee is capable of causing some harm because of his or her gender, race, religion, or national origin, that is sufficient. “If Congress had wanted to limit liability for job relocations to those who would create a significant disadvantage, it could have done so,” Kagan said, adding, “The court cannot make that decision simply by rewriting the statute.” .
Three justices – Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh – wrote opinions agreeing with the outcome but disagreeing with the reasoning.
Alito's was the most special. “I do not agree with the court’s unhelpful opinion,” he said, adding, “I don’t know what this means.”
Justice Thomas singled out several legal issues for the majority opinion, but ultimately acknowledged that it was “unlikely” that the Eighth Circuit had a sufficiently “stringent” standard in mind.
And Justice Kavanaugh wrote that he favors a different, less complex approach. Job transfers based on gender, race, religion, or national origin are discriminatory and periodic acts, regardless of whether there is specific damage. That said, he acknowledged that the court's “some of the new harm requirements appear to be relatively low” that should be easily met by anyone transferred based on gender, race, religion or national origin.