Legal Test for Other Job Bias Claims Clarified in LGBT Decision

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that federal law prohibits discrimination against LGBT workers could also help workers suing for age and race bias.

The high court clarified a legal test for proving discrimination that requires workers to show they wouldn’t have been fired or suffered some other adverse job action without their employer’s bias. Some courts have misapplied that standard—known as “but-for causation”—by treating it as a high bar and incorrectly requiring that it be the sole cause for the alleged discrimination, some scholars said.

In the LGBT workers decision, the Supreme Court made clear that but-for causation “can ...