The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down two new rulings that give employees more leeway when suing employers for retaliation based on race and age.
One of the cases involved the parameters of a Civil War-era federal law, known as Section 1981, that bans race discrimination in the making and enforcing of contracts. In a lawsuit filed by an African-American employee who claimed he was fired from his manager job with Cracker Barrel after complaining about race bias, the high court had to consider whether Section 1981 covers retaliation, even though it’s not specifically mentioned in the statute. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Section 1981 indeed encompasses retaliation claims.1 The decision has important implications for employers. In particular, employees have a longer time to file a lawsuit under Section 1981 than for cases filed under Title VII. What’s more, while damages under Title VII are capped, damages under Section 1981 are not.
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In the other new case, the Supreme Court examined whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) permitted a 45-year-old post office worker to sue for retaliation, where the ADEA provision that applies to federal-sector employment doesn’t specifically mention retaliation. (Note that the section of the ADEA that applies to other employees expressly prohibits retaliation.) The high court held 6-3 that the ADEA does prohibit retaliation against federal-sector employees.2
You can access the new rulings here or by clicking on the footnote links below. And, we’ll have more details on these decisions in an upcoming issue of California Employer Advisor.
1CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, U.S. Supreme Court No. 06-1431, 2008
2Gomez-Perez v. Potter, U.S. Supreme Court No. 06-1321, 2008