{"id":1140,"date":"2012-03-05T21:33:53","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T02:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:24:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:24:21","slug":"retiring-mcdonnell-douglas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/03\/05\/retiring-mcdonnell-douglas\/","title":{"rendered":"Retiring McDonnell Douglas"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anne King<\/p>\n

<\/em>In a recent Title VII decision,\u00a0<\/em>Coleman v. Donahoe<\/em><\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Judge Diane Wood wrote a very interesting special concurrence calling for the end of the\u00a0McDonnell Douglas<\/em>\u00a0burden shifting framework.\u00a0 (The Outten & Golden Employment Law Blog\u00a0recently highlighted<\/a>\u00a0the Wood concurrence.)\u00a0McDonnell Douglas v. Green\u00a0<\/em>established the familiar three-step framework for proving employment discrimination under Title VII and analogous civil rights laws. In the first step, the plaintiff establishes a prima facie case of discrimination. The burden of production then shifts to the employer for the second step, at which point the employer must proffer a nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse employment action. The employee bears the burden of production for the third step, which requires a showing that the employer\u2019s nondiscriminatory reason is actually a pretext for discrimination.<\/p>\n

In announcing the\u00a0McDonnell Douglas<\/em>\u00a0approach, the Supreme Court\u2019s intention was to assist plaintiffs by setting out a roadmap for proving employment discrimination via circumstantial evidence. \u00a0But in practice the rigidity of\u00a0McDonnell Douglas<\/em>\u00a0burden shifting all too often creates barriers for plaintiffs, because good evidence of discrimination won\u2019t always fit neatly into the three-step framework.
\n
\nMcDonnell Douglas<\/em>, decided in 1973, is now almost four decades years old (although the Court did tweak the framework 20 years ago in\u00a0St. Mary\u2019s Honor Center v. Hicks<\/em>, which \u00a0made it tougher for plaintiffs to show pretext).\u00a0 Judge Wood makes the case that \u201cPerhaps\u00a0McDonnell Douglas<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>was necessary nearly 40 years ago, when Title VII litigation was still relatively new in the federal courts.\u00a0 By now, however, as this case well illustrates, the various tests that we insist lawyers use have lost their utility.\u00a0 Courts manage tort litigation every day without the ins and outs of these methods of proof, and I see no reason why employment discrimination litigation could not be handled in the same straightforward way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Wood\u2019s recommendation to retire\u00a0McDonnell-Douglas<\/em>\u00a0makes good sense, although a careful circuit-by-circuit review of employment discrimination precedents is necessary before concluding that wholesale abandonment of the framework would be a positive move for plaintiffs.\u00a0 But Judge Wood\u2019s concurrence also suggests a broader question: What is the appropriate lifespan for judge-made rules and frameworks?\u00a0 And, on a related note, what factors suggest that it\u2019s time to abandon such a rule?\u00a0 Retiring certain judge-made rules \u2013\u00a0Miranda<\/em>\u00a0or the exclusionary rule, for example \u2013 may never be appropriate.\u00a0 But perhaps, given changes in the workplace and the courts\u2019 familiarity with employment discrimination law,\u00a0McDonnell Douglas<\/em>\u00a0is no longer truly necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Anne King In a recent Title VII decision,\u00a0Coleman v. Donahoe,\u00a0Judge Diane Wood wrote a very interesting special concurrence calling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-io","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}