Consumer Law

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Plaintiffs in Two Key Employment Discrimination Cases

By Brian Wolfman

Although a bit off this blog's beaten path, I thought readers might want access here to the Supreme Court's important decisions issued yesterday in CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, No. 06-1431, and Gomez-Perez v. Potter, No. 06-1321. CBOCS held by a 7 to 2 vote that 42 U.S.C. 1981 authorizes a plaintiff to claim that he was retaliated against for asserting a co-worker's right to be free from racial discrimination. Gomez-Perez held by a 6 to 3 vote that a federal employee may maintain a retaliation claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act -- specifically, the plaintiff claimed that her federal agency employer retaliated because she filed an administrative complaint alleging age discrimination. The decisions, taken together, seem to stand for the proposition that both private and federal employees have claims for retaliation even when the relevant anti-discrimination statute is silent on the question of retaliation. The majority in both cases rebuffed the defendants' arguments that the Court should narrow or effectively overrule the Court's earlier decisions in Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park (1968) and Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education (2005), recognizing retaliation-based claims under 42 U.S.C. 1982 and Title IX, respectively.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).