In the first seven days of this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed two lower court rulings in favor of employee-plaintiffs.  In Wesley v. Arlington County, the Court held that the district court erred in its application of the McDonnell Douglas burden shifting framework when it granted a motion for summary judgment for the employer. 

Wesley, a firefighter in Arlington County, Virginia, claimed that she was discriminated against and refused a requested promotion due to her race and sex.  For years she met all of the department’s published and formal objective requirements for promotion to Captain but she was continually passed up by the Chief during a final “roundtable,” where unpublished subjective criteria are discussed. 

The McDonnell Douglas framework requires an employee to present a prima facie case of discrimination which the employer may then rebut by showing an alternative cause for the allegedly discriminatory act.  To be victorious, an employee must then prove that the employer’s cause was merely pretextual.  To survive a motion for summary judgment, an employee need only present a prima facie case.  The Court found that the trial judge wrongly applied the second and third prongs of the McDonnell Douglas frame work when it granted a motion for summary judgment for the County. 

In the second case, Harman v. Unisys Corp., the court granted a motion to dismiss an employee’s numerous discrimination and Fair Labor Standards Act allegations.  The Court agreed with the trial judge’s dismissal of several counts and even stated that the complaint was “cumbersome and voluminous and contains numerous irrelevant allegations.”  However, the Court found that the district court should have allowed the employee an opportunity to refine her pleading and cure formal defects, even if the court doubted her ability to do so.

While these decisions are unpublished and therefore non-binding authority, they nonetheless show an increased willingness of the Court of Appeals of the Fourth Circuit to give employee-plaintiffs an opportunity to properly present their case. 

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 11:59 am and is filed under Equal Pay Act, Federal Discrimination Legislation, Race Discrimination, Sex Discrimination, Title VII Discrimination. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.