Mixed-Motive Test Governs Federal Worker Retaliation Claims

Federal employees only need to show an unlawful animus partly motivated an adverse employment action to prove retaliation under the primary U.S. workplace civil rights law, the Western District of Washington ruled.

The court had previously sided with the Department of the Navy in Louie Rosales’s case under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Law, agreeing that a stricter “but-for” cause test applied. That’s the standard the U.S. Supreme Court adopted in its 2013 ruling in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar.

But Judge Benjamin H. Settle reversed course after Rosales sought reconsideration, deciding that the ...