Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2013

University of Tex. Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar

133 S. Ct. 2517 | 186 L. Ed. 2d 503 | 2013 U.S. LEXIS 4704 | 570 U.S. 338 | 24 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 366 | 81 U.S.L.W. 4514

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that Title VII retaliation claims require but-for causation: retaliation must have made the difference in the employer’s adverse action, not merely have been one motivating factor.

Background

Dr. Naiel Nassar, a physician of Middle Eastern descent, worked both as a faculty member at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and as a staff physician at its affiliated Parkland Memorial Hospital. Nassar alleged that Dr. Beth Levine, his ultimate supervisor at the University, harassed him because of his religion and ethnic background, including by making a remark that “Middle Easterners are lazy.”

Seeking to remain at Parkland without being subject to Levine’s supervision, Nassar resigned from the University faculty and wrote to Dr. Gregory Fitz, the chair of internal medicine, that Levine’s harassment stemmed from bias against Arabs and Muslims. Parkland had offered Nassar a staff-physician position, but Fitz objected that the offer violated the affiliation agreement requiring staff physicians to be University faculty members. Parkland then withdrew its offer.

Nassar sued under Title VII. He claimed that Levine’s discriminatory conduct constructively discharged him, in violation of the statute’s status-based discrimination provision, and that Fitz retaliated against him for complaining about discrimination, in violation of Title VII’s antiretaliation provision. A jury found for Nassar on both claims and awarded backpay and compensatory damages, later reduced to the statutory cap.

The Fifth Circuit held that the evidence did not support constructive discharge, but it upheld the retaliation verdict. It applied a motivating-factor standard, holding that Nassar needed to prove only that retaliation was one motive for the adverse action. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide the proper causation standard for Title VII retaliation claims.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether a Title VII retaliation plaintiff may establish liability by showing that retaliation was merely a motivating factor in an adverse employment action.

Holding

No. A plaintiff bringing a retaliation claim under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a) must prove that retaliation was the but-for cause of the challenged employment action.

Reasoning

The Court began with the ordinary rule of causation: absent a statutory indication to the contrary, a plaintiff must show that the injury would not have occurred without the defendant’s wrongful conduct. In the employment-discrimination context, the phrase “because of” ordinarily means “by reason of” or “on account of,” which requires but-for causation. Gross v. FBL Financial Services had applied that understanding to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the materially identical use of “because” in Title VII’s retaliation provision supported the same rule.

Title VII’s 1991 motivating-factor provision, § 2000e-2(m), does not alter the rule for retaliation claims. Although that provision refers generally to an “unlawful employment practice,” it specifies only five motivating factors: race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Those are the status-based traits covered by § 2000e-2, not the protected opposition and participation activities covered by the separate antiretaliation provision, § 2000e-3(a).

The statute’s structure reinforced that textual reading. Congress placed § 2000e-2(m) within the section addressing status-based discrimination, rather than in § 2000e-3(a) or in a generally applicable enforcement section. Elsewhere in the 1991 Act, Congress expressly referred to both § 2000e-2 and § 2000e-3 when it meant to cover both status discrimination and retaliation. The Court treated Congress’s omission of retaliation from § 2000e-2(m) as deliberate.

The Court rejected the argument that retaliation for complaining of discrimination is itself discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or national origin. Cases inferring an implicit retaliation prohibition from broadly worded civil-rights statutes did not control because Title VII is a detailed statute that expressly and separately defines both status discrimination and retaliation. Section 2000e-2(m) is also not a substantive prohibition; it is a targeted causation rule for specified forms of discrimination.

The Court further concluded that Price Waterhouse did not preserve a motivating-factor framework for retaliation claims outside § 2000e-2(m). Congress replaced Price Waterhouse’s mixed-motive scheme through the 1991 amendments, carefully pairing a less demanding causation standard for status claims with limited remedies when an employer proves it would have made the same decision anyway. That statutory compromise did not extend to retaliation claims.

The EEOC’s contrary compliance guidance was not entitled to persuasive Skidmore deference. Its reasoning did not adequately examine the specific text and structure of §§ 2000e-2(a), 2000e-2(m), and 2000e-3(a), and its concern that retaliation might otherwise go unpunished assumed the very causation question the Court had to resolve.

The Court also noted the practical significance of the rule. Retaliation charges had become increasingly common, and a motivating-factor standard could make it easier for employees facing legitimate adverse actions to assert weak retaliation claims. Applying but-for causation, the Court reasoned, better accords with Title VII’s text while limiting liability to actions that would not have occurred absent retaliatory intent.

Issue #2

Whether the Supreme Court should enter judgment as a matter of law for the University under the newly adopted but-for standard.

Holding

No. The Court vacated the Fifth Circuit’s judgment and remanded for further proceedings under the correct standard.

Reasoning

The University argued that the evidence could not satisfy but-for causation and therefore warranted judgment in its favor. The Court declined to decide that fact-bound issue in the first instance, concluding that lower courts were better positioned to apply the newly clarified standard to the record.

The Court therefore vacated the Fifth Circuit’s judgment upholding the retaliation verdict and remanded the case for proceedings consistent with the requirement that Nassar prove retaliation was a but-for cause of Parkland’s withdrawal of its job offer.

Dissents

Justice Ginsburg

Reasoning

Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, argued that retaliation is inseparable from Title VII’s core prohibition on status-based discrimination. In her view, retaliation for a complaint of race, religion, sex, or national-origin discrimination is itself intentional discrimination connected to the protected characteristic, because the employee is punished for alleging that particular kind of discrimination. The Court’s prior decisions, she maintained, consistently recognized this close relationship.

The dissent read § 2000e-2(m) to cover retaliation claims. That provision states that an “unlawful employment practice” is established when race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor in “any employment practice.” Since § 2000e-3(a) expressly calls retaliation an unlawful employment practice, Justice Ginsburg concluded that the natural reading includes retaliation motivated by an employee’s complaint of status discrimination.

Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to strengthen, not diminish, employment-discrimination protections after decisions such as Price Waterhouse. The dissent found it implausible that Congress silently excluded retaliation from the motivating-factor rule while creating a remedial regime designed to ensure that proven discriminatory motives produce at least some liability and relief.

Justice Ginsburg rejected the majority’s structural argument based on the placement of § 2000e-2(m). In her view, § 2000e-2 includes provisions that plainly operate beyond status-discrimination claims, so its location did not show that Congress meant to exclude retaliation. She also stressed that Congress’s express references to retaliation elsewhere did not justify disregarding the broad language of “any employment practice.”

The dissent would have given respectful weight to the EEOC’s longstanding interpretation that § 2000e-2(m) applies to retaliation. The agency had explained that retaliation must be effectively remedied to preserve employees’ willingness to report discrimination, an enforcement function central to Title VII.

Finally, Justice Ginsburg criticized the majority for importing Gross’s ADEA rule into Title VII’s retaliation provision while declining to give the same meaning to “because” in Title VII’s own discrimination and retaliation provisions. Requiring juries to apply a motivating-factor test to status discrimination but but-for causation to retaliation in the same case, she warned, would create confusion and weaken the protection needed for employees to report workplace discrimination.