University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Petitioner v. Naiel Nassar (570 U.S. 338)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 24, 2013 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 570 U.S. 338 · 133 S. Ct. 2517
- Decided
- June 24, 2013
- Term
- October Term 2012
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Kennedy
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice KENNEDY delivered the opinion of the Court. When the law grants persons the right to compensation for injury from wrongful conduct, there must be some demonstrated connection, some link, between the injury sustained and the wrong alleged. The requisite relation between prohibited conduct and compensable injury is governed by the principles of causation, a subject most often arising in elaborating the law of torts. This case requires the Court to define those rules in the context of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., which provides remedies to employees for injuries related to discriminatory conduct and associated wrongs by employers. Title VII is central to the federal policy of prohibiting wrongful discrimination in the Nation's workplaces and in all sectors of economic endeavor. This opinion discusses the causation rules for two categories of wrongful employer conduct prohibited by Title VII. The first type is called, for purposes of this opinion, status-based discrimination. The term is used here to refer to basic workplace protection such as prohibitions against employer discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, in hiring, firing, salary structure, promotion and the like. See § 2000e-2(a). The second type of conduct is employer retaliation on account of an employee's having opposed, complained…
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