Welcome to the harassment section of our webpage.  This front page will reflect our most current information on sexual harassment as well as other types of harassment prohibited by law.

 

 

Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway v. White, No. 05-259, June 22, 2006 (U.S. Supreme Court)

In this end of term case, the Supreme Court adopted the standard for proving retaliation in use by the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, as well as the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, and rejected stricter standards (from the employee's point of view) that had been adopted in other Circuits. This clarifies the employee's burden in seeking to prove illegal retaliation under 42 USC §2000e-3(a). Under the clarified standard, the employee seeking to prove retaliation will only need to show that the employer's actions would have "dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination". The new standard allows claims for actions that an employer might take in retaliation outside the workplace, or not directly related to the plaintiff's employment. In the Burlington case the jury found that two of the employer's actions amounted to retaliation for White's complaint regarding sexual harassment: 1) the reassignment of White from forklift duty to standard track laborer tasks, and 2) the suspension without pay for 37 days. A SCOTUS blog posted at Akin Gump points out the standard may be adopted in other labor and employment cases involving claims of retaliation.

 

Key sections from the decision are set forth below:

 

The anti-retaliation provision protects an individual not from all retaliation, but from retaliation that produces an injury or harm. As we have explained, the Courts of Appeals have used differing language to describe the level of seriousness to which this harm must rise before it becomes actionable retaliation. We agree with the formulation set forth by the Seventh and the District of Columbia Circuits. In our view, a plaintiff must show that a reasonable employee would have found the challenged action materially adverse, “which in this context means it well might have ‘dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.’ ” Rochon, 438 F. 3d, at 1219 (quoting Washington, 420 F. 3d, at 662). We speak of material adversity because we believe it is important to separate significant from trivial harms. Title VII, we have said, does not set forth “a general civility code for the American workplace.” Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75, 80 (1998)

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 We refer to reactions of a reasonable employee because we believe that the provision’s standard for judging harm must be objective. An objective standard is judicially administrable. It avoids the uncertainties and unfair discrepancies that can plague a judicial effort to determine a plaintiff’s unusual subjective feelings. We have emphasized the need for objective standards in other Title VII contexts, and those same concerns animate our decision here. See, e.g., Suders, 542 U. S., at 141 (constructive discharge doctrine); Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U. S. 17, 21 (1993) (hostile work environment doctrine).

    We phrase the standard in general terms because the significance of any given act of retaliation will often depend upon the particular circumstances. Context matters.




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