Educational and employment tests rose to prominence after the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. They signaled that a college or employer valued ability and was committed to equal treatment. With the SAT, the New Haven fire captain’s exam, or the popular General Aptitude Test Battery, each candidate’s numerical score could be plotted on a curve. A scientific judgment could be made about who was most able, most meritorious, and most deserving of a desk in the classroom or a seat on the fire truck.

While both kinds of tests were popularized by equal opportunity laws, educational tests have had a very different legal and practical history than employment tests. Berkeley and the University of Michigan and Yale and Harvard took SAT test scores with a grain of salt, in part because data from millions of test-takers showed that the test does not predict college performance very well for African-Americans. When elite colleges made a concerted effort to diversify the student body in the 1960s, they avoided hard numerical cutoffs for SAT performance and instead took a range of different indictors, like high school grades, into account. Non-elite colleges were admitting almost all comers, so the test mattered little for the average college applicant.

Many companies responded to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by installing hiring and promotion tests on the theory that these could guarantee that placement was based on merit, not bias. While police and fire departments came to rely heavily on tests, the relationship between test and job performance was problematic, like the relationship between SAT and college performance. Employers often used general ability tests that covered basic high school math and English skills for jobs in auto factories and airplane plants that didn’t require these skills. People who do well on the GATB can make lousy bricklayers. The disconnect between test scores and job performance was the basis of a the Supreme Court’s landmark Griggs v. Duke Power decision in 1971, in which African-American plaintiffs argued that they had been denied posts at Duke Power because they scored poorly on a test that measured skills unrelated to the job. Substandard segregated high schools had prepared African-Americans poorly for such tests, and so many promising candidates for jobs botched the test. The Court ruled that hiring and promotion practices that have a “disparate impact” on certain groups, and serve no business purpose, can be discriminatory.

Personnel psychologists echoed the court’s call for tests to be validated — statistically proven to predict job performance. Lower courts encouraged validation, but Washington made no hard and fast rule that employers must validate job tests. As a result, HR departments sometimes used psychologists’ stringent criteria to validate employment tests, but more often they used guesswork or, as one HR manager told me in an interview, decided they would “throw themselves on the mercy of the court” if they were sued for using a discriminatory test. Even big city police and fire departments, many of whom were under court order to integrate, continued to use tests that had not been validated, and that were known to exclude almost all African-American or Latino candidates. New Haven’s captain’s test had not been validated. While some police and fire departments followed colleges in using supplemental criteria for selection, such as performance in a mock fire, many did something like New Haven, which gave the multiple choice exam a weight of 60% and an oral exam a weight of 40%. In effect, no one below a certain threshold could win a lieutenancy or captaincy.

In colleges, we know that the SAT isn’t a perfect predictor of success, and so we don’t exclude all candidates below a particular score. In fire departments, which use any number of different tests, fire chiefs frequently have no idea of whether the exam is a good predictor of job performance, and yet they rule out candidates below a particular score.

Would Sonia Sotomayor have passed the New Haven lieutenant’s exam? Perhaps, though there are some reasons to think she might not have. She reports that her SAT scores for Princeton and her LSAT scores for Yale were not on par with those of her peers, and that she had to teach herself grammar and vocabulary and the classics when she got to Princeton. She likely wouldn’t have gotten into either Princeton or Yale if they had used hard cutoffs, but that didn’t stop her from graduating summa cum laude from Princeton and making the Law Review at Yale. She may have done a middling job on the SAT for any number of reasons. Perhaps growing up in a housing project in the Bronx didn’t give the preparation that a childhood in Scarsdale and at Exeter Academy might have. Perhaps learning English as a second language put her at a disadvantage. Or perhaps she choked. Social psychologists find that minorities often blow tests when they are thinking of their status, and excel when they aren’t.

Soon to be Justice Sotomayor hoped as a child to become a detective. If she had followed that dream, she might well have struggled with the police department’s detective exam and been stuck as a beat cop. The world of policing would have lost a natural leader, and a great intellect. Police and fire departments could stand to learn one thing from colleges and universities. If multiple choice tests don’t predict college test-taking very well, they surely don’t predict policing and firefighting very well. Chiefs would be well advised to look at a wider range of criteria, as Princeton and Yale did in the case of Sonia Sotomayor.

Frank Dobbin is the author of Inventing Equal Opportunity

Frank Dobbins: Frank Dobbin is professor of sociology at Harvard. He has studied corporate equal opportunity and diversity programs for more than two decades. In his most recent work, with Alexandra Kalev, he is developing an evidence-based approach to diversity management, using a large sample of firms and thirty years of data to analyze the effects of popular diversity programs on workforce integration. His Inventing Equal Opportunity (Princeton University Press, 2009) traces the evolution of corporate equal opportunity and diversity programs put into place by human resources managers – programs that ultimately define discrimination in the American mind.

1. The Holding. The defendants’ decision to not use test results because their use would have meant that no African-American and only two Hispanics, who made up over half of the testtakers, would be promoted was intentional disparate treatment discrimination against the white testtakers who would have been promoted if the test results had been used. That the adverse impact of the test results amounted to a prima facie case of disparate impact discrimination was not a defense to a disparate treatment case unless the employer has a strong basis in evidence to believe that it will be liable for disparate impact discrimination.

2. A Procedurally Unusual Decision. The district court, affirmed by the court of appeals, had granted summary judgment for the defendants. Not only did the Supreme Court reject the summary judgment for the defendants but found that plaintiffs were entitled to summary judgment. That means that the Court found that no material facts existed that would justify a trial. The four slip opinions run a total of 89 pages; 31 pages – 38% of the total — deal with relatively straight forward recitation of facts, most of which are quite constested.  Many more deal with application of facts to law, again with most applications hotly contested. Reading this suggests that the Supreme Court has taken upon itself the role of a trial court.

3. Acting When the Race of Those Affected is Intentional Discrimination. The key factual finding of the Court is that: “All the evidence demonstrates that the City chose not to certify the examination results because of the statistical disparity based on race – i.e., how minority candidates had performed compared to white candidates. . . . Without some other justification, this express, race-based decisionmaking violates Title VII’s command that employers cannot take adverse employment actions because of an individual’s race. . . . [T]he city made its employment decision because of race. The City rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white.”

Justice Kennedy takes an enormous leap from the first conclusion – that the City acted because it knew the “statistical disparity based on race”—to his second – that it rejected the test “solely because the higher scoring candidates were white.”  In all the pages of factual recitation and application, there is simply no reference to any evidence that the sole cause of the decision was because using the test results would benefit whites. Is there no difference between intending not to disadvantage African-American and Hispanic candidates and intending to discriminate against the white candidates?

When the Civil Service Board made its decision, it only knew what the racial distribution and therefore the potential disparate impact if the test results were used. It did not know the identity of any of the testtakers. Therefore, it appears that an employer conscious knowledge of the race of those affected by its decisions suffices to make out intentional disparate treatment discrimination. This appears to be a tremendous change in the law.  For example, in Justice O’Connor’s concurrence in Price v. Waterhouse, she indicated that, “Race and gender always ‘play a role’ in an employment decision in the benign sense that these are human characteristics of which decisionmakers are aware and may comment on in a perfectly neutral and nondiscriminatory fashion.”

Justice Alito is convinced that, because an important participant in the political process was an African-American preacher, the decision of the CSB was “because of race” as a matter of law. Justice Ginsburg argues that the decision may have been made “because of politics” and not race since the white firefighters and their union were vociferous advocates for using the test. The decision may have been because of race or because of politics or because of some of each. Doesn’t this suggest a factual question that deserves a trial?

4. Should the African-American and Hispanic Testakers Claim Disparate Treatment Discrimination? Suppose that New Haven now uses the results of the tests and promotes some white firefighters. Because the City knew the race of those promoted, was that intentional discrimination against minority testakers who were not promoted? If not, why not? Is using the test results to promote people different from deciding not to use them?

The Supreme Court has been edging toward establishing a color-blind standard for equal protection, see Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 127 S.Ct. 2738 (2007) (plurality opinion), and Ricci appears to import that into Title VII. These decisions involve challenges by whites to the use of race in a way that gives advantages to minority group members or, as here, removes an absolute impediment to the advancement of African-Americans and Hispanics. If a color-blind standard can be used by white plaintiffs, why can’t these minority firefighters rely on it?

5. Is Proof of Intent to Discriminate Reduced to Proving the Defendant Knew the Race of the Affected Individuals? Is racial consciousness, when acted upon, the same as acting with an intent to discriminate? If so, Ricci revolutionizes discrimination law. Assume an African-American applies but is rejected for a job after an interview. Does she establish defendant’s liability by getting the defendant’s interviewer to admit that she was conscious of the fact that the plaintiff is black?

6. The Strong Basis in Evidence Justification. In United States v. Board of Educ. of the Township of Piscataway, 91 F.3d 1547 (3rd Cir. 1996) (en banc), cert. dismissed, 522 U.S. 1010 (1997), the court had imported equal protection analysis into Title VII’s treatment of affirmative action. Does the Court’s adoption of the strong basis in evidence test effectively implement that importation?  Only Justice Ginsburg in dissent puts this decision into context with the Title VII affirmative action decisions to criticize this decision. Are these affirmative action decisions in jeopardy now?

7. The “Q” Word Strikes Again. Is the fear that employers would have an incentive to use racial quotas what drives this decision?

8. Why Isn’t There Strong Support for Disparate Impact Liability? The Court concluded that, “The racial adverse impact here was signicant, and . . the City was faced with a prima facie case of disparate-impact liability.” The Court then minimizes what that means: “[A] prima facie case of disparate-impact liability – essentially a threshold showing of a significant statistical disparity and nothing more – is far from a strong basis in evidence that the City would have been liable under Title VII had it certified the results.”  Does this undermine the significance that this prima facie showing shifts both  the burden of proof and of persuasion to the defendant?  Is the Court attempting to reinstate Wards Cove?

9. Was the Test Job-Related and Consistent with Business Necessity as a Matter of Law?  The written examination part of the test asked questions based on the testtakers ability to memorize extensive documents. Under the approach of the EEOC Uniform Test Guidelines as well as professional test standards, what IOS did was to construct a test that was supposedly content validated, i.e., that it was a sample of the job. While IOS supposedly did a job analysis, neither taking written or oral exams were involved in the jobs of lieutenant or captain in the fire department.  Nor is there any indication that memorization and recall of documents played any role at all in the jobs for which the test was to be used. The use of “assessment centers” where testtakers play the role that replicates the actual job can be content validated as job samples. Isn’t there at least a question of fact whether the test that was used was not job-related and not consistent with business necessity?

10. Was Section 703(h) Test Provision Superseded by the 1991 Civil Rights Act? The Court does not address the jurisprudence associated with the test exception in original §703(h). Has the Court decided sub silentio that this provision and its underlying jurisprudence has been repealed when Congress codified disparate impact law in new § 703(k)?

11. Were There No Less Discriminatory Alternatives as a Matter of Law? The record showed alternatives that were less discriminatory – simply altering the ratio of written to oral scores appeared to have reduced discriminatory impact in Bridgeport, using “assessment centers” or altering the “rule of three” to a banding approach – all were alternatives that could have been adopted instead of the test that was used.  The Court appears to assume that, because it was too late to adopt any of these alternatives to resuscitate this test, they could not count as alternatives. But, in fact, the City could consider these precisely because it had decided not to use the results of this test.

12. Should the Minority Testtakers Claim Disparate Impact Discrimination? Assuming the City would now use the test results, should the African-American and Hispanic testtakers bring a disparate impact claim? With the Supreme Court deciding as a matter of law that the test was job-related and consistent with business necessity and that there were no less discriminatory alternatives available, is there anything left to contest?

13. Empathy for Whom? With the statement by President Obama that he seeks to appoint Justices who have empathy, what does Ricci suggest about empathy? Justice Kennedy concluded that, “Examinations like those administered by the City create legitimate expectations on the part of those who took the tests. As is the case with any promotion exam, some of the firefighters here invested substantial time, money, and personal commitment in preparing for the tests. . . . [O]nce [the test process] has been established and employers have made clear their selection criteris, they may not then invalidate the test results, thus upsetting an employee’s legitimate expectation not to be judged on the basis of race.” Nothing in any of the opinions suggest that the employer had committed itself in advance to use the test results no matter what they might be. Is the Court suggesting that the testtakers had some sort of contractual based right to have the test results used? The last part – about expectations concerning race – would appear to undermine such a contractual claim. However, what about the expectations that employers would not use employment practices that cause a disparate impact? Justice Ginsburg puts the context of this case into the larger frame of the longstanding discrimination minority firefighters have faced and the use of the disparate impact theory to attack their exclusion. Doesn’t this decision defeat their expectations in order to satisfy the expectations of the white testtakers?

14. Is This 1989 Redux? It has been twenty years, but has a new conservative majority in the Roberts Court been able to undermine Title VII just as the Rehnquist Court majority did then? Will Justice Ginsburg’s prediction that this decision will not last prove true?  Will this new majority take the step argued by Justice Scalia to embed Ricci in the Constitution by striking down disparate impact analysis as unconstitutional?

About the Author: Mike Zimmer is a law professor at Loyola University Chicago.  One of his main areas of concentration, which includes co-authoring an Aspen casebook, is employment discrimination. He graduated from Marquette Law School, clerked for Judge Fairchild on the 7th Circuit, worked at Foley & Lardner and have taught at a good number of law schools. Zimmer joined the Loyola faculty after 30 years at Seton Hall Law School.

This article originally appeared in Workplace Prof Blog on June 30, 2009. Re-printed with permission by the author.

Featured speakers on the call included Tina Tchen, White House office of public engagement director; Janet Murguia, National Council of La Raza president & CEO; Bill Yeomans, Alliance for Justice legal director; Marge Baker, People For the American Way director of public policy; Wade Henderson, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights president & CEO; and Ellen Buchman, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights vice president for field operations.

On the call, we discussed how Judge Sotomayor’s distinct and impressive qualifications make her an exemplary Supreme Court nominee to the nation’s high court. We reviewed the process from nomination to confirmation, and shared information about what you and your organization can do to get involved in the process.

Here are four things you can do right now to ensure an expedient and fair confirmation process and engage others in support of Sotomayor:

1)  Call Your Senators. Urge them to support an orderly and fair confirmation process of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court:

http://www.civilrights.org/action_center/support_sotomayor_process.html

2)  Watch the “Justice” Ad and Go Viral. The Coalition for Constitutional Values has a new 30-second television ad to introduce Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The ad highlights her fair-minded approach to the law, which is grounded both in her eminent legal qualifications and her life experiences. Watch the ad, email it to five friends, post it on Facebook, or add it to your website:

http://www.constitutionalvalues.org

3) Sign the Pledge. Support constitutional values through the nomination and confirmation of this superb candidate. Pledge to support the Coalition for Constitutional Values and learn more about Judge Sonia Sotomayor and how you can get involved by joining the coalition:

http://www.constitutionalvalues.org/?page_id=24

4) Read Up on Sotomayor. Check out the Alliance for Justice Preliminary Report on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:

http://www.afj.org/check-the-facts/supreme-court-watch

Together we can make sure Justice Sotomayor is swiftly approved to become our next Supreme Court Justice.

About the Author: Paula Brantner is Executive Director of Workplace Fairness, which hosts the Today’s Workplace blog, and has worked as an attorney in the area of employment discrimination and civil rights law for over 16 years. Workplace Fairness is a nonprofit organization that provides information, education and assistance to individual workers and their advocates nationwide and promotes public policies that advance employee rights.

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But, there is good reason to believe that the white and Latino firefighters who sued were not the most qualified for promotion.  In reality, the issue in Ricci is not reverse discrimination against better-qualified white candidates.  It is a question central to the lives of every American, of every race — “Is the person with the highest multiple-choice test score necessarily the most qualified?”

So, in contrast to the typical reverse discrimination case, it is the qualifications of those who filed the lawsuit that are in question. The Ricci oral argument suggests that the justices are likely to split along familiar 5-4 ideological lines, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy as the deciding vote. What has not been made clear in media reports about the case is how different it is from situations where less-qualified minorities benefited from racial preferences.

The reality is that several minority firefighters performed very well on the firefighter exam. Out of more than 100 candidates competing for the seven vacant captain positions and eight open lieutenant positions, Latino firefighters ranked in seventh, eighth and 13th place on the captain list and African American firefighters ranked in 14th, 15th, and 16th place on the lieutenant list. But because of a rule requiring promotions to be doled out in strict rank order, all eight of the lieutenant positions would definitely have gone to whites, who ranked first through 10th on the list, and six of the seven captain positions were likely to go to whites, as well, because they ranked first through sixth.

This is what put New Haven officials between a rock and a hard place or, as Justice David H. Souter said from the bench during oral argument last month, in a “damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation”. The city’s attorney told officials they could be sued by the high-scoring African American and Latino test-takers for violating federal civil rights laws unless they had scientific evidence to show that the white candidates were truly more qualified than the minorities who would be passed over for promotion.  This and other comments made by Justice Souter, the justice whom Judge Sotomayor has been nominated to replace, signal that he, like Sotomayor, views New Haven’s actions as constitutionally valid.  

As a legal matter, employers are prohibited from using tests that have an unjustified racially “discriminatory effect.” It is undisputed that if the list had been certified by city officials, the 2003 promotions would have been so disproportionately white it would have violated federal employment discrimination guidelines. When an employer selects one racial group at higher rates than other racial groups in violation of these guidelines, known as “the four-fifths rule,” members of the adversely affected group have grounds to sue in federal court for race discrimination.

In this case, if minority firefighters had filed a lawsuit, the burden would fall on the city of New Haven to present a scientific justification that the whites who were selected are better qualified than the minority applicants who were not promoted.

Like all standardized tests, the New Haven firefighter multiple-choice test was neither all-powerful nor perfectly precise. The reality is that there is not a clear scientific basis for concluding that the 17 white candidates and one Latino candidate, who were ranked at the top of the lists, were more qualified than the African American and Latino officers who had high scores on the test but ranked slightly lower. As a group of employment testing experts has explained in their own brief to the Supreme Court, the city of New Haven could not prove that ranking in the top-10 of over 70 test-takers means you are truly more qualified than someone who ranked in the top-15.

First, the city did not have a good scientific basis for the amount of weight it placed on the multiple-choice test — 60 percent of a firefighter’s rank on the list. In a neighboring city, Bridgeport, Conn., the fire department only gave the multiple-choice test a 30 percent weighting.

Second, using the lieutenant list as an example, we cannot be certain that the top-10 firefighters (all of whom were white) were more qualified than the top-15 firefighters (two of whom were African American) because the company that made the New Haven firefighter test has admitted that the exam does not measure important skills for the job in question. In fact, it is undisputed that the New Haven firefighter exam was not designed to measure command performance or supervisory skills.

As explained in the Supreme Court brief filed by the employment testing experts, one of the important qualities distinguishing a good fire officer from a good entry-level firefighter is that supervisory officers must have a “steady presence of command so that the unit will follow orders and respond correctly to fire conditions.” Firefighters need “command presence” in order to lead their command units in safely and effectively fighting fires.

Finally, New Haven had reason to believe it might lose a lawsuit filed by minority firefighters because there were less racially discriminatory tests available to identify the firefighters most qualified for promotion. For instance, employment testing experts have found that “assessment centers” — facilities that test firefighters using standardized job-simulation exercises — do a better job than multiple-choice tests of weeding out firefighters who are “book smart, but street dumb.” These centers compare entry-level firefighters based on their ability to do real-world tasks that are typically performed by a firefighter “on the job” instead of comparing how well they answer questions about firefighting on a pencil-and-paper multiple-choice test.

In fact, there is every reason to believe that the firefighters who filed the Ricci lawsuit would not have ranked in the same position on the list had New Haven evaluated firefighters at an assessment center.  In addition to resulting in fewer racial differences in test scores, research shows that the white firefighters who perform best on multiple-choice tests do not always fare as well on tests at assessment centers that simulate real-world firefighting tasks.  In other words, using test scores from assessment centers leads to both to the promotion of greater numbers of minority firefighters and results in the promotion of different, more qualified white firefighters.

Thus, there is a strong argument that promoting firefighters based on their performance in job simulations increases more than racial diversity in the upper ranks of fire departments. It increases public safety.

In most cases challenging standardized testing, the issue is whether test scores were used properly. Here, instead of claiming that the city used a test improperly, firefighters are suing a city for putting a stop to its own improper use of a standardized test. Even in our increasingly test-centered society, this is a striking claim. The city was right to put a halt on promotions because there is no proof that those at the top of the list were more qualified than those firefighters ranked just below them.

About the Author: Kimberly West-Faulcon is a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. Her most recent research on the legal implications of the psychometric properties of standardized tests, “The River Runs Dry: When Title VI Trumps State Anti-Affirmative Action Laws,” appears in the current volume of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

A version of this op-ed originally appeared in the Los Angeles Daily Journal on May 13, 2009. Reprinted with permission by the author.

Sonia Sotomayor’s performance as a federal judge had already been criticized in some quarters even before President Barack Obama on Tuesday nominated her to the Supreme Court. These critiques come in three flavors: first, that her decisions show she just isn’t a very good judge; second, that Obama improperly relied on diversity to make an “affirmative action” choice; and third, that she is too intemperate for the job. The bases for these criticisms are thin, persuasive only to the many commentators and senators already inclined to oppose any Obama nominee.

The first line of attack, on Sotomayor’s rulings, does have some very recent ammo: Ricci v. DiStefano, a case the Supreme Court should decide just days or weeks from now. In Ricci, Sotomayor was part of a unanimous three-judge panel that allowed the New Haven Fire Department to jettison the results of a promotion test that resulted in a disproportionate number of whites receiving top scores.

Critics say Sotomayor ruled to allow blatant reverse discrimination, but the reality was more complex for the poor City of New Haven, Conn., which faced competing demands under federal law: (a) avoid discriminating by race, including against whites and also (b) consciously undertake efforts to eliminate even well-intended job tests that have a “disparate impact” on racial minorities, unless the test is a provable “business necessity.” Each is a clear textual command of federal law, and each crashes headlong into each other, making it certain that some judges would rule one way while others rule the opposite.

Whichever way the Supreme Court rules, the decision seems unlikely to be unanimous (most of the recent affirmative action and reverse discrimination cases were 5-4 votes), but that doesn’t mean either side is “bad at judging.” The difference of opinion means only that among skilled judges there is a philosophical difference on a difficult legal question, one we already knew: the current Supreme Court majority (Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy) is more aggressive about policing “reverse discrimination” against whites, while a current Supreme Court minority (Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) and many lower-court judges (such as Sotomayor) do not see any impermissible “reverse discrimination” in applying the rule against allowing most tests that effectively screen out racial minorities.

A broader look at Sotomayor’s jurisprudence shows an impressive body of work, including in the same field as this more controversial recent case. For example, when I first heard Sotomayor’s name floated, I looked up some of her old written judicial decisions, and I was pleased to see that one of my favorite federal appellate decisions in employment law (a field of mine), Raniola v. Bratton, was Sotomayor’s handiwork (a piece of trivia I had forgotten over the years).

In the 2001 opinion, Sotomayor led a unanimous appellate panel in reversing the pretrial dismissal of a female police officer’s claims of discrimination, retaliation, and a hostile work environment. Sotomayor’s opinion was meticulous, addressing every one of the trial judge’s rulings and rationales methodically, with exhaustive citations to prior judicial decisions from around the country — a more scholarly effort than typically is necessary for a decision on an individual New York police officer’s individual claim. Agree or disagree with her on contentious issues like discrimination law, Sotomayor is a thoughtful, scholarly judge whose work holds up with the best of them.

The second line of attack, on Sotomayor as an “affirmative action” choice, implies that Obama sacrificed merit selection in favor of diversity selection. But Sotomayor’s resume qualifications are unimpeachable: 17 years as a federal judge, at both the trial and appellate levels (unlike the nine current justices, whose only judging experience has been on appeals, not trials); impeccable academic credentials (graduating summa cum laude from Princeton University and, then, from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the school’s most prestigious academic publication, the Yale Law Journal); and varied legal practice experience (she was a criminal prosecutor in Manhattan and then a civil litigator, eventually specializing in intellectual property work).

Still, even the best resume gets you only on a long list of similarly qualified candidates — just ask federal appellate judges J. Harvie Wilkinson, Edith Jones, J. Michael Luttig, Emilio Garza or any of the other impressive Republican Supreme Court candidates whom President George W. Bush passed over in 2005 in favor of then-federal appellate judges Roberts and Alito.

Admittedly, among the list of qualified candidates, Sotomayor was especially appealing because of the diversity she would bring to the court — not just a women to join a currently almost all-male court, and not just the first Hispanic justice, but also an individual who came from humble beginnings. Her mother, a nurse, raised her in the South Bronx after her father passed away in her youth.

The Supreme Court is the least diverse branch of the federal government, in part because due to its low turnover (only one opening every four years or so) and age of its nominees (most nominees are in their 50s), the current Supreme Court largely reflects the pool of 50-something lawyers in the 1980s and 1990s, which in turn reflects the pool of those attending law school in the 1960s — for historical reasons, not the most diverse crowd.

With the Supreme Court, a critical institution that lags the rest of the government (and private industry) in diversity and that is impossible to diversify immediately, Democratic and Republican nominations alike have considered diversity, even of the purely race-and-gender sort — contrary to the “affirmative action is for liberals” folklore. For his first Supreme Court nomination, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan, having promised to appoint the first female justice, picked Sandra Day O’Connor, who turned out to be the most powerful justice of the 1990s and early 2000s despite a light record of prior accomplishment; O’Connor had been a state legislator and state lower court judge, a far cry from Sotomayor’s resume.

A decade later, in 1991 President George H.W. Bush famously declared “the best-qualified person” for the Supreme Court to be Thomas, who at the time had barely a year of judicial experience and was the youngest court nominee in decades — but who just happened to be an African-American Republican available to replace the retiring Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s only African-American Justice.

President George W. Bush’s ill-fated nomination of Harriet Miers came after he demanded that staffers specifically provide him female names for potential nominees, according to recent published reports.

So the likely “affirmative action” attacks on the Sotomayor nomination miss the mark, both in their insinuation that she lacks impressive qualifications and in their implication that only liberal Democrats consider diversity relevant to a high court as important as it is non-diverse. Someday, the Supreme Court will be diverse enough that presidents will face less such pressure — but the current court of seven white men, one African-American man, and one white woman isn’t quite there yet.

The third criticism of Sotomayor — that she is an intemperate bully — derives largely from a collection of anonymous quotations in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary. These reviews, submitted by practicing lawyers, are not pretty: “She is a terror on the bench.” “She is very outspoken.” “She is temperamental and excitable. She seems angry.” “She is overly aggressive.” “She abuses lawyers.” “She really lacks judicial temperament. She behaves in an out-of-control manner. She makes inappropriate outbursts.”

Like many lawyers, I do read the AFJ when I need background information on a judge, but its anonymous quotations have to be taken with a few grains of salt. I do not believe the AFJ ever has claimed that the comments they publish are a random sampling of the great many comments they receive, as opposed to a sampling of the most notable comments. More importantly, some of the complaints struck me as suspiciously common attacks on outspoken, high-powered women. How many men are criticized for being “very outspoken”? Do Sotomayor’s critics see it as a bad thing that Scalia frequently is “overly aggressive” on the bench and in his notoriously entertaining public speeches?

Some quick numbers bear out the suspicion of gender bias in the anonymous criticisms of Judge Sotomayor. Fewer than 20 percent of federal appellate judges are female, but of the appellate judges called a “bully” or accused of similar words in the AFJ (outburst, intemperate, temperamental, discourteous, or unpleasant), 40 percent (4 of 10) were women. In sum, female judges are twice as likely as male judges to draw criticism for outspokenness and aggression. (It is theoretically possible, of course, that twice as many female judges as male judges actually are outspoken and aggressive, but there is little reason to think that, and my anecdotal experience is to the contrary — that male judges are more likely to be aggressive, whether in proper or improper ways.)

While my small-number statistics don’t qualify as an official empirical study, anyone with experience in supervisor evaluations of employees, student evaluations of professors, workplace promotion decisions, etc., knows that assertive women are more likely to be criticized as “excitable,” “overly aggressive,” etc. Any fair reading of evaluations, especially anonymous ones, takes into account this well-known gender bias, to avoid penalizing women for Type A traits that draw far less criticism, and even draw praise, in men.

The attacks on Sotomayor’s aggressiveness miss the mark for a more fundamental reason, though. “Judicial temperament” is critical for trial judges dealing with human drama — witnesses reliving traumatic events, emotionally charged evidence, and lawyers’ arguments that tug on jurors’ heartstrings.

But as any practicing lawyer can tell you, appellate litigation is a typically dry affair, vastly different from trials. In appeals, parties and witnesses do not testify, and the lawyer does not issue impassioned hand-over-heart pleas. The vast majority of an appellate lawyer’s work is the solitary researching and writing of lengthy briefs analyzing language from judicial precedents, statutes and regulations. The in-court portion of an appeal is just a short argument on the briefs’ legal analysis, usually just 10 to 15 minutes, to a panel of judges. When a lawyer gets roughed up by a panel of appellate judges, usually the criticism is an impersonal, geeky debate about what amounts to legal minutiae, however important the case is.

Especially at the Supreme Court, appellate litigators tend to be grizzled pros who have been through it all — professional appellate litigators at the Department of Justice, and prestige appellate litigators at private firms, like Roberts in the late 1980s to early 2000s, who served in both of those kinds of appellate litigation jobs.

“Judicial temperament” is a good thing, but it matters mainly for the over 99 percent of judgeships in the country that are not at the United States Supreme Court, which handles only appeals, primarily by seasoned vets of the appellate bar.

The debate on the Sotomayor nomination will be fascinating to watch. The criticisms of her rulings could yield a productive public debate about how judges should decide cases, how the Constitution should be interpreted, and other matters fundamental to our constitutional democracy.

On the other hand, we could get distracted by sideshows: criticism of a Democratic “affirmative action” nomination or criticism of “judicial temperament” based on the exact sort of anonymous complaints about “aggressiveness” that women commonly receive. In short, the nomination could be a wonderful exercise in democracy, or it could be a train wreck of political demagoguery.

About the Author: Scott A. Moss is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School.

This article originally appeared in Politico on May 27, 2009. Reprinted with permission by the author.

Photo: AP

At oral argument Justice Souter acknowledged that the case could go either way, because there were competing lines of legal authority from which the case could be viewed.  The Court’s choice to immunize AT&T’s conduct from liability by resurrecting General Electric v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125 (1976), a decision overturned by Congress’ enactment of  the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, provides a vivid illustration of conservative judicial activism under the guise of  “strict” application of the rule of law.

There was nothing inevitable about this decision. Gilbert holds that denying medical benefits to pregnant women is not “necessarily” sex discrimination, not that disparate treatment of pregnant women could never be.  In fact, one year later Justice Rehnquist, who authored Gilbert, wrote the majority opinion in Nashville Gas Co. v. Satty, 434 U.S. 136 (1977) holding that burdening pregnant women by forcing them to forfeit earned seniority is sex discrimination.

In this case, AT&T’s pregnant employees were deprived of all but 30 days of seniority credit for the time they were out on pregnancy leave, while employees on leave for other disabilities forfeited none. The Court chose to characterize this disparate treatment of pregnant employees as not providing a “benefit,” permissible under Gilbert.  But it could just as easily have decided that it created a “burden” constituting illegal sex discrimination under Satty.

Another choice the Court made was to treat the case as a challenge to AT&T’s seniority system as a whole, rather than to a specific, post-PDA retirement benefit calculation. There is a vast difference, recognized by the courts, between “competitive” seniority and “benefit” seniority.  The Hulteen plaintiffs did not seek to obtain a competitive advantage over male co-workers, or any other retroactive benefit.  They merely sought equal treatment in the calculation of future compensation — retirement benefits“ to which they are clearly entitled by the explicit language of the PDA: “[W]omen affected by pregnancy….shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes, including receipt of benefits under fringe benefit programs, as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work…”

In holding as it did, the majority chose to “empathize” with AT&T rather than the retiring women who had already endured a lifetime of disadvantage on the job as a result of their pre-PDA pregnancy leaves.  The majority weighed speculative harm to AT&T’s “reliance” interest more heavily than Congress’ explicit, strongly worded intent to protect women from economic injury and injustice on the basis of pregnancy.

But to what end?   To establish the principle that companies may perpetuate discrimination even after Congress acts?    What the Court chooses to call a “retroactive” application of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act could just as easily be described as enforcement of the statute.

No wonder Justice Ginsburg was figuratively tearing out her hair!  There could not be a better illustration of what is at stake in the appointment of Justice Souter’s replacement nor of the need for another woman with Justice Ginsburg’s understanding of employment discrimination on the Supreme Court.  Let’s hope that Congress acts swiftly to overturn this exceedingly bad decision, in language that will finally lay to rest the ghost of Gilbert past.

About the Author: Charlotte Fishman Charlotte Fishman is a San Francisco employment discrimination attorney, and Executive Director of Pick UP the Pace.  She authored the an amicus brief for the National Employment Lawyers Association et al. in support of respondents in AT&T v. Hulteen.

The questions presented are:

1. In a “mixed-motive” age discrimination case — where both legitimate and illegitimate reasons motivated the employment decision, should the employer be permitted to avoid liability if proves that it would have taken the same action anyway?
2. What kind of evidence needs to be presented — direct or circumstantial — to prove a “mixed-motive” case?
3. Does the discriminatory reason need to be a “substantial reason” or “a motivating reason” for the employee to prevail?
4. Which party bears the burden of proof?

The answers turns on whether the Supreme Court will apply the older mixed motive analysis under Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins or the newer standard under the Civil Rights Act of 1991. (”CRA”); or (less likely) whether the Court will overrule Price Waterhouse as requested by the employer-respondent.

In the 1989 Price Waterhouse decision, the plaintiff Ann Hopkins presented direct evidence (as opposed to circumstantial evidence) that she was discriminated against when she was denied a promotion to partnership. The defendant basically said that even though it  may have discriminated,  it would have reached the same result anyway in denying Ms. Hopkins her promotion.

In it’s fractured decision,  the Supreme Court came up with a new way of proving discrimination in what it called a “mixed-motive” case.  Simply said, this new method of proof set forth a complicated and confusing burden shifting framework.

After the Price Waterhouse decision, courts began allowing employers who used illegal factors in employment decisions to avoid liability by merely showing that they would have made the same decision anyway even without considering the unlawful factor.

In other words, the unintended consequence of the decision was that employers were getting off the hook in the face of direct evidence of discrimination.

As a result, Congress overturned that portion of Price Waterhouse when it enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1991.  In so doing, it specifically lowered the standards for employees in “mixed-motive” cases.  Theoretically, the CRA  makes it easier for employees to win these cases.  Under the Act:

• the employer is not absolved of liability in “mixed-motive cases” even if it proves it would have made the same decision anyway, but damages to the employee are restricted.

• in  order to take advantage of the mixed-motive theory and shift the burden to the defendant, the plaintiff must “demonstrate” that race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for any employment practice, even though other factors also motivated the practice

The legislation was silent as to what type of evidence (direct, circumstantial, clear and convincing, etc.) the plaintiff needed to successfully prove the illegal motivation.

The issue of what kind of evidence was required was decided by the Supreme Court inDesert Palace, Inc. v.Costa in 2003. According to that decision, Congress intended the term “demonstrate” to mean that an employee could prove his or her case bydirect or circumstantial evidence. As the Court stated:

Title VII’s silence with respect to the type of evidence required in mixed-motive cases . . . suggests that we should not depart from the “[c]onventional rul[e] of civil litigation [that] generally appl[ies] in Title VII cases.” … That rule requires a plaintiff to prove his case “by a preponderance of the evidence,” . . . by using “direct or circumstantial evidence,” Postal Service Bd. of Governors v. Aikens,460 U.S. 711, 714, n. 3 (1983).

You would think that would settle it but there’s always a wrinkle, and the wrinkle for Mr. Gross is that  the CRA applies to Title VII and does not specifically mention the Age Discrimination in Employment Act . As a result, according to FBL Financial, neither the CRA nor the Desert Palace decision apply to Gross’ case.

Paul Secunda from the Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog points out that conservative justices like Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito may jump on this argument.

One argument, likely to be favored by conservative justices like Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, is a textualist approach arguing that Congress knew what it was doing, could have expressly included the ADEA in the CRA of 1991, but chose not to for whatever reason. If we are unhappy with the current state of affairs, the argument continues, the proper approach is to allow Congress to amend the CRA of 1991 to include ADEA claims.

The flip side is that disparate treatment claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (which is what this is) are always interpreted identically to claims brought under Title VII (which prohibits discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin) on issues like the ones before the Court.

Gross’ argument is that there would be no reason not to interpret the ADEA  consistently with Title VII and no reason not to do so in this case.  That is in fact what many courts have done. (ie the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Blair v. Henry Filters)

If anyone wants more, better, or different analysis of  the Gross case,  there are lots good pieces on it (SCOTUSBLOG, Ross Runkel’s Law Memo are two)

Whatever the outcome, as a practical matter I don’t think it will change the way employees and their lawyers go about proving age discrimination cases:

• Plaintiffs are going to present all the evidence they have whether it’s direct or circumstantial, or both.

• Most of us who represent employees have never seen the benefit of getting a “mixed motive” instruction even when we have direct evidence of discrimination because it’s too confusing to the jury.

• It’s just a much easier and better standard for employees in discrimination cases to have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence, whether direct or circumstantial, that age, race, sex, religion, national origin, or disability was a motivating factor in the adverse employment decision.

For sure, the decision will be interesting to Supreme Court observers to see how the justices line up on this one.  Other than that, it’s not very interesting at all, but since it’s not often that an age discrimination cases hit the Supreme Court, it’s got to be talked about even though I am the first to admit –it’s mostly academic.

Image: www.visitingdc.com

Crossposted from Ellen Simon’s blog Employee Rights Post.

About the Author: Ellen Simon is recognized as one of the foremost employment and civil rights lawyers in the United States. Ms. Simon is the owner of the Simon Law Firm, L.P.A., and Of Counsel to McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman, a Cleveland, Ohio based law firm. She is also the author of the legal blog, the Employee Rights Post. Her website is www.ellensimon.net.

In 2001 Betty Dukes and a handful of women sued Wal-Mart, charging it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of an individual’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin. They charged that women who work at Wal-Mart are paid less than men in comparable positions despite having higher performance ratings and greater seniority. They also allege that women receive fewer promotions and when promoted they wait much longer than male employees.

Following two years of discovery, including review of over a million pages of documents (including Wal-Mart’s employee compensation data), depositions of both Wal-Mart executives and our clients, testimony of statisticians, a labor economist and a sociologist, the District Court certified the class finding that common questions of fact and law existed. The court also found that there was significant evidence of corporate-wide practices and policies of excessive subjectivity and gender stereotyping in personnel decisions. The class was certified for injunctive relief and punitive damages.

This is Wal-Mart’s third attempt to decertify the class, and it has garnered the support of large corporate interests, as well as the Pacific Legal Foundation whose amicus brief in support of Wal-Mart sums up their view of this case. Their two points are that “class certification would violate Wal-Mart’s due process rights” and that “federal courts are not the proper forum for redressing broad social justice claims or disputes between social classes.”

When broad social justice goals are embedded in the law, then courts must redress these claims. Title VII was enacted with the stated goal of eliminating the societal norm which relegated women and men of color to second class status in employment, excluding them from many jobs, paying them lower wages and subjecting them to the least desirable working conditions.

Since this action was filed Wal-Mart has put forth numerous arguments seeking to defeat class certification: the case is too big and unmanageable; plaintiffs’ claims are not typical; there is no evidence of common practices that harm the plaintiffs; and Wal-Mart’s right to due process would be violated. The case is big because Wal-Mart, with 4,259 stores, is the nation’s largest employer. Wal-Mart wants the right to defend itself against each and every woman who claims she was paid less or unfairly denied promotion opportunities.

Class actions were established as a vehicle for addressing systemic harms, and Wal-Mart and many other large businesses seek to convince the courts that justice is better served on an individual case by case basis. But given the astronomical disparity in resources between Wal-Mart and the underpaid female class members, this case presents the textbook example of why class actions have been–and still are–the only viable means of redressing systemic discrimination. A Wal-Mart employee has a better chance of winning the Lotto than garnering the resources to sue one of the largest profit-making enterprises in the world. Wal-Mart knows that if it can defeat class certification, it diminishes the likelihood it will be held accountable for its wide-spread discriminatory practices.

Until recently big business enjoyed a period of exuberance and expansion fueled by the mantra that less oversight and regulation fostered business growth and prosperity. Accounts of corporate excesses and irresponsibility (and at times criminal activity) remind us daily that an absence of regulation is not a good thing. Wal-Mart is one of the very few corporations that continues to post a profit and is performing admirably well in the rough economic environment. Our clients want Wal-Mart to succeed, and as the company’s backbone, they should be sharing in its success. They look forward to the day when every woman who works or shops at Wal-Mart knows that the Company’s financial success has not been made at the expense of its female workforce.

A Peaceful Revolution is a blog about innovative ideas to strengthen America’s families through public policies, business practices, and cultural change. Done in collaboration with MomsRising.org, read a new post here each week.

NOTE: Cross posted from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/debra-a-smith/ipeaceful-revolutioni-wal_b_178260.html

About the Authors: Irma D. Herrera is the Executive Director of Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco based organization whose mission is to protect and secure equal rights and economic opportunities for women and girls through litigation and advocacy. Her articles on legal and cultural issues were published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsday, and Ms. Magazine. Debra A. Smith has over twenty-five years experience litigating complex employment discrimination and other civil rights. Debra has been with Equal Rights Advocates since July 2001 where she continues her class action litigation, including co-counseling in the largest sex discrimination class action to date in the United States against Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. which involves more than 1.6 million low wage women workers.

But will the winds of change continue to blow when the Supreme Court considers AT&T v. Hulteen, the last case heard in 2008?

AT&T v. Hulteen raises the question: Does the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 prohibit AT&T from giving smaller pensions to women who took pregnancy leave before its passage than it gives to other retirees with the same length of service? The Pregnancy Discrimination Act amended Title VII to require that “women affected by pregnancy … shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes, including receipt of benefits under fringe benefit programs, as other persons … similar in their ability or inability to work.”

Before 1978, it was standard practice in the telecommunications industry to treat pregnant employees differently from employees who were temporarily disabled for other reasons. Company policy forced pregnant women like Noreen Hulteen to go on leave while they were still physically able to work, and new mothers were not guaranteed immediate return to work after recovery from childbirth. Their leaves were classified as “personal” rather than “disability,” depriving them of the full seniority accrual enjoyed by employees disabled for reasons other than pregnancy. They were not permitted to shift to disability leave even if an unrelated disability extended their absence from work.

Non-pregnant employees who anticipated or suffered a period of disability were not subject to forced leave or delayed return. They received full seniority credit for the entire leave period. Upon return to work, non-pregnant employees retained the “net credited service” date that they had at the outset. By contrast, employees returning from pregnancy leave had their dates of hire “adjusted,” reducing their seniority by all but 30 days of the leave’s duration. Hulteen lost 210 days of service credit under this regime.

After the act went into effect, AT&T eliminated its discriminatory leave policies, but not the discriminatory service credit adjustments created by those policies. AT&T continued to use pregnancy adjusted net credited service dates to calculate retirement benefits after the Pregnancy Discrimination Act went into effect, and has been insisting on its legal right to do so, with mixed success, for 30 years.

Enter the Supreme Court. Twice, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that AT&T’s conduct violates Title VII. The first time the Supreme Court denied certiorari. The second time, AT&T persuaded the court to take the case. At oral argument, its gamble appeared to have paid off.

In most press reports following the oral argument, the smart money was on victory for AT&T, and it was not hard to see why. Justice Anthony Kennedy is often the crucial swing vote on issues that divide liberals and conservatives. He seemed deeply troubled by the idea that a ruling in favor of AT&T’s retiring mothers could possibly, in the current economic climate, reduce pension funds available for everyone.

Still, reading tea leaves is a perilous game, and as inaugural afterglow fades, the Ledbetter Act and the Crawford opinion give rise to cautious optimism that the court’s decision in Hulteen will align more with Congress’ purpose in enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, than with its panic in enacting the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Here’s why.

First, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act resolved a key issue in the case – timeliness – in Hulteen’s favor. In the words of the act: “[A]n unlawful employment practice occurs, with respect to discrimination in compensation … when an individual is affected by application of a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice.” Hulteen’s claim is timely under the Ledbetter Act because she filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at the time AT&T awarded her a smaller pension than retirees with the same length of service.

Second, last week’s Crawford decision inspires hope that the justices will view the claim that Title VII permits AT&T to pay reduced pensions to women who took pre-Pregnancy Discrimination Act pregnancy leave with a skeptical eye. In Crawford, the employer argued that Title VII protects an employee who complains about discrimination on her own initiative, but not one who reports the same discrimination in the same words when her boss asks a question. Justice David Souter’s opinion rejected the employer’s position as not only wrong, but “freakish.” This is not language you hear every day from the Supreme Court.

Well, what could be more freakish than arguing that Title VII permits you to continue to calculate pensions using a discriminatory system that would violate the Pregnancy Discrimination Act if adopted today, just because it was in use when the act went into effect?

Twenty years ago, the court knew what to do with a similar argument. Speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court in Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385 (1986), Justice William Brennan wrote: “A pattern or practice that would have constituted a violation of title VII, but for the fact that the statute had not yet become effective, became a violation upon title VII’s effective date, and, to the extent an employer continued to engage in that act or practice, it is liable under that statute.”

To be sure, Bazemore concerns paychecks, whereas Hulteen concerns pension benefits, but the fundamental equity principle is identical: Title VII was enacted to eliminate discrimination against everyone on the basis of protected status, not just those fortunate enough to enter the workforce after its effective date. Treating newly hired black employees (or newly pregnant women) the same as similarly situated others will not satisfy that statutory goal if the victims of pre-act discrimination remain in its thrall.

AT&T argues that imposing liability will upset its “settled expectation” that women who took pre-Pregnancy Discrimination Act pregnancy leaves would not receive equal benefits upon retirement. But Bazemore was decided in 1986. AT&T has already received a 30-year economic windfall by not changing its pension benefit calculation system. Now it’s time for justice.

In the words of Obama when signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: “[M]aking our economy work means making sure that it works for everybody; that there are no second-class citizens in our workplaces….Ultimately, equal pay isn’t just an economic issue … it’s a question of who we are – and whether we’re truly living up to our fundamental ideals.”

And if AT&T needs a bailout, well, the Treasury Department is right down the street.

About the Author: Charlotte Fishman is a San Francisco employment attorney, a regular columnist on employment discrimination and women’s issues, and author of the National Employment Lawyers Association’s amicus brief supporting Noreen Hulteen et al. in the U.S. Supreme Court.

This article originally appeared in the San Francisco and Los Angeles Daily Journal on February 5, 2009. Reprinted with permission of the author.

The most recent of these decisions, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), concerns Lilly Ledbetter, who tried to enforce the prohibition against gender wage discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Ledbetter worked for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company from 1979 to 1998, during which period Goodyear paid her less than her male counterparts. Like most employers, Goodyear keeps salaries secret. Ledbetter learned of the discrimination only when she retired; by then the pay discrepancy had become very large. When she sued for back pay to make up for the accumulated shortfall, a 5-to-4 majority ruled that because she hadn’t complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 180 days after the discriminatory act first occurred–when she hadn’t even known she was being discriminated against–she was entitled to absolutely nothing. At a time when women on average still earn significantly less than only a fraction of similarly qualified men, the decision creates an often insurmountable barrier to the right to equal pay.

A worker’s right to receive medical benefits through an employer’s health plan is supposed to be guaranteed by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Supreme Court opinions have, however, interpreted ERISA as effectively pre-empting lawsuits predicated on a failure to provide those benefits. At the same time, the Court has interpreted ERISA to provide an inadequate set of federal remedies, opening, as one distinguished lower court judge put it five years ago, a “gaping wound” in the statute. Thus, if an HMO improperly denies coverage of a particular medical procedure or a hospital stay under ERISA, the patient must either pay for the procedure personally and then sue for reimbursement–a financial impossibility for most workers–or seek an emergency court order forcing the HMO to provide the needed benefits. HMO officials understand very well that both remedies are wholly impracticable for most workers.

The 4.7 million employees of state governments have lost even the possibility of enforcing their rights under such important federal laws as the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs minimum wages and overtime; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act; and the Americans With Disabilities Act. These statutes expressly authorize state workers to sue to enforce their rights; yet in Alden v. Maine (1999), a 5-to-4 majority of the Court held that if states violate these laws, state sovereignty blocks victims from suing.

One final example: undocumented workers in the United States are legally entitled to many of the same rights as American citizens. In 2002, however, the usual 5-to-4 majority ruled that an employer who illegally fired an undocumented union organizer did not have to release back pay. Although it is technically illegal to fire any worker for joining a union, resisting sexual harassment, complaining about discrimination or receiving less than the minimum wage, after that decision no prudent undocumented worker would dare to complain because she would have no remedy if she were fired for having done so. The decision–Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB (2002)–thus encourages employers to hire undocumented workers, since they can violate the workers’ rights with impunity.

Many of these injustices could be corrected with legislation, but without a progressive Congress and president, HMOs and business groups will be able to block any significant changes. Which is another reason why the upcoming elections are so crucial.

Cross-posted in The Nation’s November 3, 2008, edition.

About the Author: Eric Schnapper is a professor of law at the University of Washington School of Law, teaching Civil Rights, Civil Procedure and Employment Discrimination.  He served for twenty-five years as an assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., specializing in appellate litigation and legislative activities.