Supreme Court Reinforces Obligation of Decision-Maker to Carefully Examine the Basis for Taking Employment Action

Pillsbury

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03.14.11

On March 1, 2011, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the employment discrimination case Staub v. Proctor Hospital, __ U.S. __, slip op. (2011). The takeaway lesson from this ruling is that an employer may be liable for a employment decision made by an innocent ultimate decision-maker (i.e., one who possesses no discriminatory animus towards an employee subject to adverse employment action) if that decision is tainted by discriminatory input provided by the employee’s supervisors.

In Staub, the Court addressed the circumstances under which an employer may be held liable for employment discrimination based on the discriminatory animus of an employee's supervisor who influenced, but did not make, the ultimate employment decision. The statute at issue was the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act ("USERRA"), which provides in relevant part:

A person who is a member of . . . or has an obligation to perform service in a uniformed service shall not be denied initial employment, reemployment, retention in employment, promotion, or any benefit of employment by an employer on the basis of that membership, . . . or obligation.

An employer shall be considered to have engaged in actions prohibited . . . under subsection (a), if the person's membership . . . is a motivating factor in the employer's action, unless the employer can prove that the action would have been taken in the absence of such membership." §4311(c).

38 U.S.C. §4311(a), (c). The Court noted that USERRA is "very similar to Title VII," which prohibits employment discrimination where "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" "was a motivating factor for any employment practice, even though other factors also motivated the practice." Therefore, this ruling will likely have broad application across a number of anti-discrimination employment statutes.

Read more: Supreme Court Reinforces Obligation of Decision-Maker to Carefully Examine the Basis for Taking Employment Action

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