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Civil Rights Act; Title VII; Discrimination Law; workplace discrimination; Adverse Employment Action; Hostile Work Environment; Brown v. Brody; Chambers v. District of Columbia; Circuit Split; harm; de minimis harm; Muldrow v. City of St. Louis Missouri
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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Dogma, Discrimination, And Doctrinal Disarray: A New Test To Define Harm Under Title Vii, Zach Islam
Dogma, Discrimination, And Doctrinal Disarray: A New Test To Define Harm Under Title Vii, Zach Islam
Brooklyn Law Review
Historically, federal courts have used the “adverse employment action” test in Title VII disparate treatment, disparate impact, and retaliation cases to determine whether a plaintiff has suffered adequate harm. This note argues that this approach is fundamentally flawed. At the outset, the test is a judicial power grab with no support in the statutory language. What is more, it fails to uphold the plain policy purposes for Title VII by largely ignoring evidence of discriminatory acts in the workplace that Congress sought to prevent in passing the statute. Consequently, Title VII plaintiffs get the short end of the stick with …