Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari. Debord V. Mercy Health System Of Kansas, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2664 (2014) (No. 13-1118), 2014 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs Lexis 1120, Eric Schnapper, Mark A. Buchanan

Court Briefs

QUESTION PRESENTED

Section 704(a) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids an employer to retaliate against any employee because that worker "opposed" unlawful discrimination.

The question presented is:

Does section 704(a) prohibit retaliation against a worker because of the worker's statements:

(1) only when the statements are made to the worker's own employer or to federal or state anti-discrimination agencies (the rule in the Tenth and Fourth Circuits), or (2) also when the worker's statements are made to any other person (the rule in the First, Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Circuits)?

The Tort Label, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Courts and commentators often label federal discrimination statutes as torts. Since the late 1980s, the courts increasingly applied tort concepts to these statutes. This Article discusses how courts placed employment discrimination law within the organizational umbrella of tort law without examining whether the two areas share enough theoretical and doctrinal affinities.

While discrimination statutes are torts in some general sense that they do not arise out of criminal law and are not solely contractual, it is far from clear that these statutes are enough like traditional torts to justify the reflexive and automatic use of tort law. Employment discrimination statutes …

Let's Pretend Discrimination Is A Tort, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In the past decade, the Supreme Court has repeatedly invoked tort common law to interpret federal discrimination statutes. During this same time period, the Supreme Court increasingly invoked textualism as the appropriate methodology for interpreting these statutes. One immediate effect of these two trends - tortification and textualism - is to restrict discrimination law by tightening causal standards.

This Article explores how interpreting discrimination statutes through the lenses of tort law and textualism can expand, rather than restrict, discrimination law. It assumes that courts will continue to characterize discrimination statutes as torts and as deriving from the common law, despite …

Torts And Civil Rights Law: Migration And Conflict: Symposium Introduction, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Curiously, the connection between civil rights and civil wrongs has not been a topic that has captivated the attention of large numbers of legal scholars over the years. The distance that has developed between the two fields likely reflects their placement on opposite sides of the public-private divide, with Title VII and other anti-discrimination statutes forming part of public law, while torts is a classic, private law subject. To compound the division, both subjects are to some extent still under-theorized. Employment discrimination scholarship is often caught up in the process of analyzing the doctrinal implications of the latest Supreme Court …