California employment case index

UPS accommodated drivers hurt on the job, drivers with ADA disabilities, and drivers who lost their DOT certifications — but told pregnant driver Peggy Young she could not work under a 20-pound lifting restriction. The Supreme Court vacated summary judgment and built the governing framework for PDA accommodation claims: show the employer accommodated others similar in ability to work, and a jury may infer discrimination if the policies significantly burden pregnant workers and the employer’s reasons are not strong enough to justify it. In California, where the PDLL and FEHA impose affirmative accommodation duties, Young is the federal floor — essential in pure Title VII postures, rarely the lead theory at home.

The Supreme Court held 5-4 that an employee is a “supervisor” for Title VII vicarious-liability purposes only if empowered to take tangible employment actions — hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline. An employee who merely directs daily work is a co-worker, so the employer is liable only for negligence. The decision does not govern California’s FEHA, which defines “supervisor” more broadly and imposes strict liability for supervisor harassment.

The Supreme Court’s foundational “cat’s paw” decision: an employer is liable when a biased supervisor performs an act intended to cause an adverse employment action that is a proximate cause of the ultimate decision — even if the formal decisionmaker had no discriminatory animus. A decisionmaker’s “independent investigation” does not automatically break the causal chain, especially when it credits the biased actor’s report without independently confirming the action was justified.

Reversing summary judgment in a FEHA failure-to-promote case, the Ninth Circuit reconciled its competing pretext lines — direct evidence of bias needs only "very little" weight to reach a jury, while circumstantial evidence must be "specific" and "substantial" — a formulation later questioned after Desert Palace but still central to MSJ briefing on both sides.

An employer is vicariously liable for actionable hostile-environment harassment by a supervisor with authority over the employee. When no tangible employment action was taken, the employer may raise an affirmative defense (the Faragher/Ellerth defense): that it exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct…

In Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth (1998) 524 U.S. 742, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employer is vicariously liable under Title VII for a supervisor’s hostile-environment harassment of a subordinate, but where the harassment yields no tangible employment action the employer may raise the two-element Ellerth/Faragher affirmative defense. The Court demoted the “quid pro quo” and “hostile work environment” labels from liability tests to threshold proof categories and grounded employer liability in general agency principles.

Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination “because of sex” protects against same-sex sexual harassment; nothing in the statute bars a claim merely because the plaintiff and the harassers are of the same sex, so long as the conduct constitutes discrimination because of sex and meets Title VII’s other requirements.

A unanimous Supreme Court held that Title VII hostile-environment harassment need not “seriously affect [an employee’s] psychological well-being” or cause tangible injury. Reaffirming Meritor, the Court adopted a “middle path” requiring conduct severe or pervasive enough to create an environment that both a reasonable person and the victim find abusive, judged on the totality of the circumstances.

St. Mary’s Honor Center v. HicksDisproving the employer’s stated reason permits — but does not compel — a finding of intentional discrimination; the plaintiff must persuade the factfinder both that the reason was false and that discrimination was the real reason.St. Mary’s Honor Center v. Hicks (1993) 509 U.S. 502Parallel citations: 113 S.Ct. 2742; 125 […]

In UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc. (1991) 499 U.S. 187, the Supreme Court held that an employer's fetal-protection policy excluding all fertile women from lead-exposed jobs is facial sex discrimination under Title VII as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act — not a neutral practice to be tested for business necessity. The narrow bona fide occupational qualification defense reaches only qualifications affecting an employee's ability to do the job, and cannot be grounded in feared harm to a future fetus or in cost and tort-liability concerns.