Employment Discrimination

Most state and federal employment discrimination statutes prohibit employers from making certain decisions “because of” an employee’s protected characteristics or activities. Courts interpreting this language have developed a number of frameworks and standards to assess whether a plaintiff has demonstrated the causation required to make out a claim of employment discrimination. Two standards frequently invoked by courts are but-for causation...

Employers seeking to test job applicants for strength or speed while adhering to the mandates of Title VII often use gender-normed physical-ability tests. Gender-normed tests set different raw cutoffs for male and female applicants such that each class would be expected to have rough­ly equal pass rates. This practice has helped employers—especially law enforcement agencies—retain physical hiring standards while miti­gating their disparate...