Court makes it easier for workers to sue

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made it easier Thursday for workers to sue employers for retaliating against them when they complain about sexual harassment or other discrimination. The court ruled that employees may collect damages, even in some cases where the punishment did not involve getting fired or losing wages.

The decision expands the legal rights of millions of workers who are covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the main federal law against job discrimination. It had the full support of eight justices, although the ninth justice, Samuel Alito, agreed with the result but differed from the majority reasoning.

In 1964, Congress made it illegal for employers to retaliate against employees who complain of discrimination. But until Thursday, the Supreme Court had never defined what was meant by retaliation.

Now, many retaliation cases that had previously been dismissed are likely to go to trial. That will encourage lawyers for alleged victims to take on more cases, and, accordingly, raise companies' costs for lawyers and defensive management practices.

The court's ruling came in the case of Sheila White, who in the summer of 1997 was the only woman on a Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway maintenance crew in Memphis, Tenn. She had experience operating a forklift and was given that job soon after she arrived. But after a few months, she told her supervisor that her foreman was making sexist comments and off-color jokes — along with remarks, echoed by other workers, that a woman did not belong there.

The foreman was suspended for 10 days, but the supervisor also removed White from the forklift and reassigned her to a track crew at the same pay. She contacted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), contending that the reassignment was unlawful gender discrimination and retaliation for her original complaint.

Later, after a dispute with another foreman, White was suspended without pay for a 37-day period that included the Christmas season. That also led to an EEOC complaint.

White filed a grievance through her union. After a hearing, the company agreed that the suspension was a mistake, and she was reinstated with back pay.

In addition to her EEOC complaints, White sued the company, charging that the job change and the suspension amounted to retaliation under the Civil Rights Act. A jury ruled against her complaint of sex discrimination, but it ordered the railroad to pay her $43,000 in compensatory damages for having retaliated against her.

In their appeal, lawyers for the railroad noted that in 2004 alone, more than 20,000 discrimination claims citing retaliation were filed, and they argued that lower courts were too willing to allow such claims for minor shifts in job status. They said claims should be restricted to major actions, such as a firing or demotion.

But Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that, under the circumstances, the railroad's actions would have been enough to deter a reasonable employee from making a charge in the first place. This, he wrote, is the proper definition of illegal retaliation, and should set the standard for all future cases.

"Justice Breyer's standard opens the door to claims based on actions that before today companies would not have suspected were actionable," said Daniel Westman, a lawyer with the law firm of Morrison & Foerster who represents employers in job-discrimination cases. "Companies will have to be much more careful as to how they manage employees who are covered by Title VII."

The opinion also reflected a widely shared sense at the court that employment-discrimination law has to be flexible enough to account for the realities of a diverse modern workplace, in which the same action by an employer could have different effects depending on the employee.

For example, a "petty slight" — such as a supervisor failing to invite an aggrieved employee to lunch — does not amount to illegal retaliation, the court said. However, if the worker is excluded from weekly planning meetings, he or she may well be able to win a separate discrimination charge against the employer.

Breyer's opinion was endorsed by a broad liberal-conservative majority, with only Justice Alito writing in a concurring opinion that he saw "practical problems" with the majority's approach. Like the Bush administration, Alito argued that retaliation claims should be limited to those involving the terms or conditions of employment — but that White should win the case, even under that more restrictive legal standard.

In other cases:

Duress: The court ruled 7-2 that defendants, not prosecutors, have the burden of proving in federal trials that they committed a crime under duress. The ruling could prompt states to change their laws.

Prison grievances: The justices ruled 6-3 that a California inmate had to go through a prison-grievance system before bringing a suit claiming he was wrongly punished for alleged inappropriate activity with volunteer priests.

Deportation: The court upheld, by an 8-1 vote, the deportation of a Mexican man who lived in the United States for 20 years and claimed he should not be subject to 1996 restrictions on immigrants.

Additional information from The Associated Press