Supreme Court dismisses BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles v. EEOC
The U.S. Supreme Court has dismissed BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles v. EEOC, Docket No. No. 06-341, shortly before the case was scheduled for oral argument, because the parties reached a settlement. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had sued the soft-drink bottler over the alleged firing of a black employee on racial grounds. The case dealt with the liability of an employer for discrimination when a decision-maker was not motivated by race but a lower-level supervisor had acted with racial bias. The National School Boards Association had filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on the employer’s side. It said a ruling for the EEOC could mean school boards would have to delve deeper into district supervisors’ motivations in employment decisions. “The withdrawal of this case represents a real loss to the employer community, the HR profession and to employees, because we missed an opportunity for the Supreme Court to clarify what has clearly been a debate amongst the appellate circuits around the country,” says attorney Manesh Rath, a partner at Keller and Heckman in Washington, D.C. Other observers point out that there are two similar cases in the Supreme Court pipeline, one involving a white professor being denied tenure at a historically black college. “If they’re inclined to look at this issue of law, they can do it,” says Michael Foreman, deputy director of legal programs for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
According to Mr. Rath, if the Supreme Court adopts the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit’s stance, it will “short-circuit the plaintiff burden” because someone alleging discrimination would not have to prove that the person making the decision was biased. “That’s a change in what the plaintiff had to prove for 35 years,” he says. On the other hand, Mr. Foreman fears that if the Court takes a position similar to the one outlined in the summary judgment, it will allow employers to create “a structure of plausible deniability” to avoid complying with anti-discrimination statutes. “It would dramatically undermine the purposes of Title VII,” he says. He also contends that if racism contributes to adverse employment impact, it does not matter where the bias occurs within the company hierarchy. The point is to eradicate it everywhere. “We want it out of the employment decision,” Mr. Foreman says. However, Mr. Rath counters those decisions can be made free of discrimination by someone in the HR office, who may not know that bias existed somewhere else in the organization. “These things don’t come to light except through the microscopic scrutiny of litigation,” he says.
Education Week
By Mark Walsh
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Workforce Management
By Mark Schoeff Jr.
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[Editor’s Note: For background on the case, including a link to NSBA’s amicus brief, see below. The Court has since denied review in the case “in the pipeline” involving the tenure denial: Sawicki v. Morgan State Univ., 170 Fed.Appx. 221 (4th Cir. 2006), which affirmed a district court ruling in 2005 WL 5351448 (D. Md. Aug. 2, 2005).]
[NSBA School Law pages on BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles v. EEOC]