The Lawletter Vol 41 No 4

Dora Vivaz, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     It has long been settled law that plaintiffs who seek redress for employment discrimination under Title VII must exhaust the administrative remedies provided under that law before bringing their claims in court. Title VII, of course, not only prohibits the initial unlawful status/class discrimination, but also prohibits retaliation for complaining about such discrimination. The interplay of those two prohibitions has seemingly muddied the waters on the exhaustion issue.

     In a recent case, a federal district court within the Fifth Circuit was faced with the question of that interplay. Mitchell v. Univ. of La. Sys., Civ. Act. No. 13-820-JWD-RLB, 2015 WL 9581823 (M.D. La. signed Dec. 30, 2015). In the case before it, the plaintiff had filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") charge in June 2013, claiming discrimination. She was transferred in July 2013. Although she never filed a second EEOC charge, she included both a claim for unlawful discrimination and a claim for retaliation in her action in the federal court. The defendant argued that the retaliation claim was barred for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, but the court disagreed.

Dora Vivaz, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     Inferences have always played an important role in the analysis of discrimination cases, because direct evidence of discrimination is rare, and such cases, therefore, most often depend on circumstantial evidence. Accordingly, a plaintiff may establish a prima facie case of discrimination by showing circumstantial evidence sufficient to support an inference of discrimination. By the same token, the evidence may allow inferences that benefit the defendant.

     In the employment discrimination context, one such inference is the "same actor inference," which allows the factfinder to infer that when the person who took the adverse employment action against the plaintiff is the same person who hired the plaintiff, the adverse action was probably not based on unlawful discrimination. As the court noted in a recent case, there is a split amongst the circuits as to whether the inference is mandatory or permissive and as to whether it may be relied upon as a basis for summary judgment. See, e.g., Garrett v. Sw. Med. Clinic PC, No. 1:13-cv-634, 2014 WL 7330947 (W.D. Mich. Dec. 19, 2014) (text available only on Westlaw).