Today the Supreme Court granted certiorari in one case of interest to the business community:
Title VII - Time Limit to File EEOC Charge
Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, a plaintiff seeking
to bring suit for employment discrimination must have first
filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC. If, before
filing the EEOC charge, the plaintiff sought relief from a state
or local agency with authority over such matters, the plaintiff
must have filed the EEOC charge “within 300 days after the
unlawful employment practice occurred.” 42 U.S.C. §
2000e-5(e)(1). Today, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in
Lewis v. City of Chicago, No. 08-974, to decide
whether, when an employer adopts a discriminatory employment
practice in violation of Title VII’s disparate impact
provisions, that 300-day period begins to run at the
announcement of the practice, or whether instead the time period
starts anew at each use of that practice.
Lewis is of considerable interest to companies covered by
Title VII because, depending on the case’s resolution,
well-established and facially neutral employment practices might
expose such companies to liability years after those practices
were adopted.
In the case below, African-American applicants who had been
denied consideration for entry-level firefighter positions on
the basis of a written test filed suit against the City of
Chicago, alleging that the City’s hiring practice had a
disparate impact on African-American applicants and bore no
demonstrable relationship to firefighter performance. The City
admitted that its use of the test had a disparate impact on
African Americans, but argued that the suit was untimely because
the plaintiffs had failed to file an EEOC charge within 300 days
of the City’s announcement of the test results upon which its
future hiring decisions would be based. The district court
disagreed, finding that a new claim accrued each time the City
made a hiring decision based on those results, and that the
plaintiffs’ filing of an EEOC charge within 300 days of the
City’s most recent round of hiring was therefore timely.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed.
In its view, the applicants’ claims had accrued when they were
notified of the test results, which was more than a year before
the first EEOC charge was filed. According to the Seventh
Circuit, the City’s subsequent hiring decisions were nothing
more than the inevitable effects of the previously announced
test results and thus did not re-start the clock for purposes of
the 300-day time limit. Consequently, the Seventh Circuit held,
the applicants’ failure to file an EEOC charge within 300 days
of the test results being announced required dismissal of their
suit.
Absent extensions, amicus briefs in support of the
petitioners will be due on November 23, 2009, and amicus briefs
in support of the respondent will be due on December 23, 2009.
Any questions about this case should be directed to
Diana Hoover (+1 713 238 2628) in
our Houston office or Marcia Goodman
(+1 312 701 7953) in our Chicago office.
The Court also granted certiorari today in Carr v. United
States, No. 08-1301, in which Mayer Brown LLP represents the
petitioner on a pro bono basis. Carr, a criminal case, presents
statutory and constitutional questions regarding retroactive
application of the federal Sex Offender Registration and
Notification Act.
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