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Nassar's Effect on the Causation Standard

By Kari Erickson Levine
November 25, 2013

In one of the biggest employment cases of 2013, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, 570 U.S. ___ (June 24, 2013), the Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that the mixed-motive theory under employment discrimination laws (which only requires a plaintiff to show that the employer had several motives for taking adverse action, including an unlawful motive) does not apply in Title VII retaliation claims. (See Alexis M. Dominguez, “Clearer Employer Liability Standards ' ,” Employment Law Strategist, September 2013,
bit.ly/17boXPD.)

Title VII prohibits two forms of conduct. The first is “status-based discrimination,” where an employer discriminates on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The second is “retaliation,” where an employer takes an adverse employment action against someone because that person opposed a discriminatory act, complained of, or sought legal remedies for unlawful workplace discrimination. While Nassar changed the causation standard for Title VII retaliation claims when it rejected the mixed-motive standard that is permissible for these claims, it remains unclear what effect the ruling will have on the causation standard for claims brought under other federal anti-discrimination laws like the American's with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Both of these contain similar causation language to that contained in Title VII.

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