By: Oyvind Wistrom<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court resolved a split in the circuits as to whether an employee is required to show a \u201csignificant\u201d injury or harm in connection with a job transfer to meet the threshold for proving an adverse employment action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.\u00a0 The Court rejected the \u201csignificant\u201d injury standard, and adopted a new standard that only requires an employee who is involuntarily transferred from one position to another to show that he\/she suffered some harm to satisfy the adverse employment action prong of his\/her case.<\/p>\n
The case was brought by Jatonya Muldrow, a police sergeant who claimed she was transferred from her job as a plainclothes police officer in the intelligence section of the St. Louis Police Department because she was a woman. \u00a0Muldrow worked in the Intelligence Division from 2008 until 2017, where she investigated public corruption and human trafficking cases. \u00a0She also oversaw the Gang Unit, served as head of the Gun Crimes Unit, and was assigned as a task force officer with the FBI.\u00a0 Despite her high employment evaluations, a new unit commander transferred her out of the Intelligence Division, justifying the transfer, in part, by noting that the division\u2019s work was \u201cvery dangerous.\u201d \u00a0Over her objections, Muldrow was reassigned to a uniformed job in another district where she supervised the activities of neighborhood patrol officers \u2014 approving arrests, reviewing reports and handling other administrative matters.<\/p>\n
Though her pay and rank remained the same, Muldrow sued the police department, asserting that she had been harmed by the transfer. \u00a0Because she was no longer in the Intelligence Division, she lost her FBI status and the car that came with it, and in the new job Muldrow often had to work nights and weekends, instead of the Monday-through-Friday workweek she had worked in the intelligence unit.<\/p>\n
Although the district court and the court of appeals both granted summary judgment for the police department, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case noting that the words \u201cdiscriminate against\u201d contained in Title VII refer to \u201cdifferences in treatment that injure\u201d an employee.\u00a0 In a typical transfer case, that worse treatment may involve a reduction in pay or benefits, but such economic or tangible effects are not necessarily required where the employee can show that the transfer resulted in some harm.\u00a0 Writing for the Court, Justice Elena Kagan explained that as long as an employee can show some harm because of sex, race, religion or national origin, that is enough. \u201cHad Congress wanted to limit the liability for job transfers to those causing a significant disadvantage, it could have done so,\u201d wrote Kagan, adding that the court \u201cdoes not get to make that judgment\u201d by rewriting the statute.<\/p>\n
This decision represents a sharp departure from the previous standard that had been followed by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois.\u00a0 All employers covered by federal anti-discrimination laws must now be careful to ensure that employment transfers that could be shown to be motivated by the employee\u2019s membership in a protected class do not result in any harm or diminution in responsibilities or status as to avoid liability under Title VII.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Oyvind Wistrom Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court resolved a split in the circuits as to whether an employee is required to show a \u201csignificant\u201d injury or harm in connection with a job transfer to meet the threshold for proving an adverse employment action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-decisions-legislation","category-discrimination"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Linder-marsack-DISCRIMINATORY-job-TRANSFER.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WrIF-iq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1180,"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindner-marsack.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}