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Pragmatism Over Politics: Recent Trends In Lower Court Employment Discrimination Jurisprudence, Lee Reeves
Pragmatism Over Politics: Recent Trends In Lower Court Employment Discrimination Jurisprudence, Lee Reeves
Missouri Law Review
This Article has five parts. After considering empirical evidence, Part I concludes that judges' political ideology plays only a limited role in their decisionmaking. Part II identifies the increase in case filings over the last two decades as a likely non-ideological cause of the increased judicial skepticism towards claims of employment discrimination. This Part begins by examining aggregate trends in the district and appellate caseload and then translates caseload into the more meaningful metric of workload. Part II next evaluates various steps courts have taken to handle these workload increases. Finally, Part II concludes with a discussion of why employment …
Discrimination After Daugherty: Are Missouri Courts Contributing To Or Motivated By The Number Of Cases On The Discrimination Docket, Amanda Stogsdill
Discrimination After Daugherty: Are Missouri Courts Contributing To Or Motivated By The Number Of Cases On The Discrimination Docket, Amanda Stogsdill
Missouri Law Review
For more than twenty years, Missouri courts have applied the federal McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting analysis to determine the outcome of a defendant's motion for summary judgment in claims of employment discrimination. However, the Missouri Supreme Court recently abandoned the McDonnell Douglas framework in favor of a new method of analysis derived from a Missouri Approved Jury Instruction. This new analysis has become known as the "contributing factor" test. In the months since Daugherty, controversy has surrounded this standard. Many defense attorneys claim that the "contributing factor" test significantly lowers the bar that a discrimination plaintiff must meet in order to …