SCOTUS to Hear Female St. Louis Police Sergeant’s Job Bias Case

The US Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a St. Louis police sergeant’s claims that her forced transfer out of the intelligence unit and the denial of her subsequent transfer request was sex bias.

The justices will address a circuit split on the proper standard for evaluating whether alleged incidents of workplace discrimination are actionable under federal civil rights laws. The court limited the question presented: “Does Title VII prohibit discrimination in transfer decisions absent a separate court determination that the transfer decision caused a significant disadvantage?”

At issue is the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit’s ruling that Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow couldn’t hold St. Louis accountable under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because her rank, pay, and responsibilities remained the same. Muldrow claims the court imposed a judicially created “adverse employment action” standard that’s at odds with Title VII’s text.

Muldrow got the US government’s support. The justices should hear the case to decide whether Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination in the terms, conditions, or privileges of employment is limited to employer actions that cause a worker to experience “a materially significant disadvantage,” the government said.

The government said that the Eighth Circuit’s holding lacked any foundation in Title VII’s text, purpose, or history and failed to give “terms, conditions, or privileges” of employment its ordinary meaning. All forced job transfers and denials of job transfers based on a protected trait such as sex are actionable under Title VII, a view that’s supported by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance and Supreme Court precedent, it said.

Circuit Split

The Eighth Circuit’s ruling “contributes to a longstanding, deepening circuit conflict over” the types of discriminatory conduct that are actionable under federal workplace bias law, Muldrow said in her petition seeking high court review. The split has grown out of a misunderstanding of Supreme Court precedent, with just two circuits properly applying “the statutory text as written,” she said.

On the other hand, the full D.C. Circuit correctly held that a worker isn’t required to prove “some additional harm over and above” an employer’s discriminatory job decision to establish a Title VII claim, Muldrow said.

That ruling overturned the circuit’s erroneous “objectively tangible harm” standard and recognized that Title VII prohibits bias in all of a job’s terms, conditions, and privileges, the government said.

Most other circuits have strayed from or ignored Title VII’s text, which makes no mention of an adverse employment action requirement, Muldrow said.

The government filed briefs in Muldrow and in Davis v. Legal Services Alabama Inc. at the justices’ invitation. Davis seeks review of an Eleventh Circuit ruling that former US Rep. Artur Davis (D)'s lawsuit alleging an Alabama legal services group unlawfully suspended him because he is Black didn’t violate Title VII because his suspension was paid and thus didn’t change his job terms or conditions.

A resolution by the justices “would also have beneficial effects beyond Title VII” as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and various federal whistleblower laws include similar language regarding the terms and conditions of employment, the government said.

St. Louis initially waived its right to oppose Muldrow’s request for Supreme Court review but filed a brief at the court’s request. There isn’t a circuit split over the adverse job action requirement, it said.

No circuit has ever ruled that Title VII plaintiffs don’t need to show “a harm” to hold an employer liable, the city said. The decisions by the circuits that Muldrow argues disavowed an adverse employment action requirement involved “different factual circumstances, not materially different legal standards,” it said.

Georgetown Law Appellate Courts Immersion Clinic represents Muldrow. The city’s law department represents St. Louis. The US solicitor general represents the government.

The case is Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, U.S., No. 22-193, cert. granted 6/30/23.