| Litigants: | McDonnell Douglas v. Green |
| Arguedate: | March 28 |
| Argueyear: | 1973 |
| Decidedate: | May 14 |
| Decideyear: | 1973 |
| Fullname: | McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green |
| Usvol: | 411 |
| Uspage: | 792 |
| Parallelcitations: | 93 S. Ct. 1817; 36 L. Ed. 2d 668 |
| Prior: | Green v. McDonnell-Douglas Corp., 318 F. Supp. 846 (E.D. Mo. 1970); 463 F.2d 337 (8th Cir. 1970); cert. granted, . |
| Subsequent: | On remand, Green v. McDonnell Douglas Corp., 390 F. Supp. 501 (E.D. Mo. 1975); affirmed, 528 F.2d 1102 (8th Cir. 1976). |
| Majority: | Powell |
| Joinmajority: | unanimous |
| Lawsapplied: | Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 |
McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), is a US employment law case by the United States Supreme Court regarding the burdens and nature of proof in proving a Title VII case and the order in which plaintiffs and defendants present proof. It was the seminal case in the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a United States federal law that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. After the Supreme Court ruling, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Pub. L. 102-166) amended several sections of Title VII.[1]
Title VII prohibits employment discrimination "because of" certain reasons. While "because of" may be understood in the conversational sense, the McDonnell Douglas case was the first landmark case to define this phrase.
McDonnell Douglas was an aerospace company in St. Louis at the time of the lawsuit, but has since been acquired by Boeing. Percy Green was a black mechanic and laboratory technician laid off by McDonnell Douglas in 1964 during a reduction in force at the company.[2] Green, a long-time activist in the civil rights movement, protested that his discharge was racially motivated. He and others, in a protest referred to in the case history as a "stall-in", used cars to block roads to McDonnell Douglas factories.[3] On one occasion, someone used a chain to lock the front door of a McDonnell Douglas downtown business office, preventing employees from leaving, though it was not certain whether Green was responsible.[4]
Soon after the locked-door incident, McDonnell Douglas advertised for vacant mechanic positions, for which Green was qualified. Green applied, but was not hired, with McDonnell Douglas citing his participation in blocking traffic and chaining the building.[5]
Green subsequently filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alleging that he had been treated unfairly because of his activity in the Civil Rights Movement, but not alleging any outright racial bias. He then sued in U.S. District Court on both of those grounds, though the EEOC had not made a finding on the latter, and later appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit[6] before the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.[7]
The case was argued in front of the U.S District Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals, and in front of the Supreme Court by Louis Gilden, a leading civil rights attorney and solo practitioner from St. Louis. The Supreme Court's decision was awarded to Green in a 9-0 vote.
The Supreme Court held the following, delivered by Justice Powell.
See main article: McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting. Arguably the most important part of the Court's decision is the creation of a framework for the decision of Title VII cases where there is only relatively indirect evidence as to whether an employment action was discriminatory in nature. The McDonnell Douglas case established that, in an employment discrimination case:
In practice, the third step is the most difficult step for plaintiffs to achieve successfully.[13]
This framework differs from earlier strategies for resolving employment discrimination cases in that it affords the employee a lower burden of proof for rebutting an employer's response to the initial prima facie cases. Instead of questioning whether the employer acted "because of" an unlawful discriminatory factor, the court may now investigate whether the employer's proffered reasons for taking the employment action at issue were in fact a pretext.[14]
Since the case was handed down in 1973, all the federal courts have subsequently adopted the order and allocation of proof set out in McDonnell Douglas for all claims of disparate-treatment employment discrimination that are not based on direct evidence of discriminatory intent.[15]
As for the impact of the case on the original plaintiff and defendant, the case was remanded to the District Court to adjudicate the case in compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling. On remand, the district court found in favor of McDonnell Douglas.[16] That decision was again appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and was affirmed.[17]