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Class Dismissed: Equal Protection, The "Class-Of-One," And Employment Discrimination After Engquist V. Oregon Department Of Agriculture, Matthew M. Morrison

University of Colorado Law Review

This Note examines whether government employees should be able to assert so-called "class-of-one" claims against public employers under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Traditional equal protection claims allege that the government has impermissibly singled out the plaintiff for disparate treatment on account of his or her race, gender, or some other trait shared with a larger class of individuals. Such claims reflect the traditional understanding of the Equal Protection Clause as a prohibition on discriminatory group classifications. Class-of-one claims, however, merely allege that the plaintiff was intentionally singled out from other similarly situated individuals and subjected to unequal treatment …