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Court Strengthens Work Bias Rules

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Los Angeles Times

Published: May 28, 2008

WASHINGTON - To the surprise of civil rights advocates, the Supreme Court on Tuesday strengthened workplace anti-discrimination laws, ruling that employees who say they were punished for complaining of bias can sue.

In a pair of decisions, the court concluded claims of retaliation are covered by long-standing civil rights laws, even though this kind of discrimination was not mentioned specifically in the statutes.

In the first decision, the court said the nation's oldest civil rights law, passed just after the Civil War, not only gives blacks the same rights as whites to make contracts, it protects them from being fired for voicing complaints about the mistreatment of other black employees.

The 7-2 ruling clears the way for a former assistant manager at a Cracker Barrel restaurant south of Chicago to take his lawsuit to a jury. He alleged that he was fired after complaining about a white supervisor who made racist comments and about the firing of a black service worker.

In the second decision, the court said older federal employees who are punished after complaining of age bias can sue the government for this retaliation. Government lawyers had argued that these workers are protected by the civil service system and have no right to sue.
Justice Samuel Alito disagreed and spoke for a 6-3 majority in clearing the way for federal employees to sue if they were victims of on-the-job retaliation. The decision revives a suit filed by a 45-year-old postal clerk from Puerto Rico.
Civil rights and civil liberties advocates said they were pleasantly surprised by the two rulings. Steven R. Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the rulings "are appropriately grounded in the realities of the workplace. Workers who fear retaliation are far less likely to report discrimination."

The case of the former Cracker Barrel manager had prompted worries from civil rights advocates last year when the justices voted to hear the company's appeal. They feared the case would lead to a ruling that further limited the legal remedies for bias in the workplace.

The case had already taken an unusual turn. Hedrick Humphries, the former Cracker Barrel manager, was representing himself, and a judge dismissed his claims under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - the most commonly used anti-discrimination measure - because he had failed to pay certain court fees on time. But Humphreys also had cited the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and its provision in the year following that said people in the United States "shall have the same right ... to make and enforce contracts ... as is enjoyed by white citizens."

Justice Stephen Breyer cited precedents from the 1960s as well as amendments by Congress in 1991 that said the law should be read broadly as a protection against racial bias.

Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented. "Retaliation is not discrimination based on race," Thomas wrote. "The injury he suffers is not on account of his race; rather, it is the result of his conduct."

The second decision concerned federal employees only. In 1967, Congress made it illegal for private employers to discriminate against workers because of their age, but the provision did not apply to the government.

Myrna Gomez-Perez was 45 when she was denied a transfer and allegedly harassed after complaining of age bias. A federal judge in Puerto Rico and the U.S. court of appeals in Boston threw out her suit for retaliation.

"The key question in this case is whether the statutory phrase 'discrimination based on age' includes retaliation based on the filing of an age discrimination complaint. We hold that it does," said Alito for the court.

Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, along with Scalia and Thomas. Roberts said the federal civil service rules protect federal workers from retaliation.

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