Under the recent Supreme Court Ruling of Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, employees no longer need to suffer “significant” harm to state a claim of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”). Prior to the ruling, many lower courts had long required Title VII plaintiffs to establish significant harm when suing their employers. The prior significant harm standard typically limited Title VII claims to those involving ultimate employment decisions, such as hiring/firing, promotions, and compensation setting. Accordingly, under Muldrow, discrimination claims that would have failed in the past for lack of substantial harm may now be able to proceed.
In Muldrow, a Police Sergeant was transferred to a different department against her will, despite receiving strong performance reviews. Sergeant Muldrow alleged that because she was a woman, she was transferred from a desirable position in the department to a less prestigious, more administrative position. Although Sergeant Muldrow received the same salary and rank as she did in her prior role, she alleged the perks, benefits, and schedule were inferior in the new role.
Sergeant Muldrow sued the City of St. Louis under Title VII claiming that her transfer to a different department was discriminatory and based on her gender. The trial court granted summary judgment for the City and the Eighth Circuit affirmed, holding that minor changes in working conditions were not sufficient to establish a material employment disadvantage. The Supreme Court granted certiorari because, prior to Muldrow, federal circuits were split on how much harm a plaintiff needed to show to prove an adverse employment action under Title VII.
In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the lower court’s ruling and the notion that Title VII requires a plaintiff to show she suffered “significant” harm due to an alleged discriminatory act. The Supreme Court analyzed the text of Title VII and determined the plain language simply did not contain a significant harm requirement. The Court stated: “there is nothing to otherwise establish an elevated threshold of harm. To demand ‘significance’ is to add words—and significant words, as it were—to the statute Congress enacted.”
After rejecting the significant harm standard, the majority then proclaimed that, while plaintiffs are not required to show “significant” harm, they must nevertheless show that they suffered “some” harm. Exactly what constitutes “some” harm was left undefined, but the Court went on to state the “transfer must have left [the plaintiff] worse off, but need not have left her significantly so.”
Given the ambiguity of this redefined standard, courts will have to flesh out exactly what “some” harm means and what facts plaintiffs will need to establish to successfully challenge an employer’s allegedly discriminatory act. Regardless, employers will now likely face Title VII challenges involving employment decisions that may have been dismissed in the past because the harm did not rise to the level of “significant.” Although the Muldrow decision was focused on job transfers, the ruling may lead employees to challenge other types of employment actions that do not constitute “significant” adverse changes in employment terms and conditions, such as being excluded from projects, a change in job responsibilities, and scheduling changes.
