It's not every day in this depressing era that I can say that there was an important blow against workplace discrimination struck by the Roberts Court, but yesterday was such a day.
If you were wondering how egregious a case of workplace discrimination has to be to get the Roberts Court to unanimously side with a plaintiff, we have an answer. Thompson v. North American Stainless involved a case in which a company allegedly fired a woman's fiancee after she had filed a sex-discrimination complaint against the company. The Sixth Circuit ruled that such "retaliatory" firings were not covered by Section VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Somewhat surprisingly, the Court -- speaking through Antonin Scalia (!), with Elena Kagan not participating -- found that "we have little difficulty concluding that if the facts alleged by Thompson are true, then NAS’s firing of Thompson violated Title VII." Obviously, the Supreme Court clearly holding that retaliatory firings violate Section VII is a very good thing.
-- Scott Lemieux
