The Supreme Court recently decided two cases relating to employment law issues. In the first, involving Federal Express, the Court attempted to resolve the issue of what has to be submitted to the EEOC to comply with the requirement that an employee file "a charge" alleging unlawful age discrimination to begin the litigation process under the ADEA. The second case, which involved Sprint as a defendant, related to a more serious issue of whether coworker testimony about how they had been treated could be admitted to support an individual plaintiff's discrimination claim.
In the FedEx case, the employee filed an intake questionnaire and detailed affidavit supporting her age claim, but did not file a formal written charge of discrimination on a form typically used by the EEO. The Court noted that the EEOC’s position--a charge was a filing which, taken as a whole, should be construed as a request by the employee for the EEOC to take whatever action necessary to vindicate the employee's rights--was entitled to substantial deference. As noted above, this written filing generally occurs using a particular piece of paper, but sometimes it doesn't. The Court determined that the EEOC's uneven application of the standard was not enough to void it, and, therefore, the documents ultimately filed were sufficient to meet the charge requirement under the statute.
If the administrative phase of the EEOC proceedings were more significant in the overall litigation process, this decision might be big news. As it is, relatively few of the cases that make it to litigation are disposed of by pointing out some failure in the nature of the charge actually filed with the Commission. The Court's interpretation of the EEOC regulations is consistent with its general rule that federal agencies can set their own standards as long as those standards are reasonable.
The Sprint case is something of a disappointment. The plaintiff here also sued for age discrimination (these cases are going to become more and more prevalent over the next decade as the Boomers do not go gently into that good night) and, at trial, sought to introduce testimony by five other former Sprint employees who claimed that they too had also been victims of age discrimination at Sprint. None of the individuals worked in the plaintiff's group, nor had any of them worked with the supervisors in her chain of command. Sprint, of course, moved to exclude this testimony, saying it was irrelevant to the central issue of whether plaintiff's supervisor terminated her because of her age. The trial court agreed, stating that evidence of discrimination against employees not similarly situated to the plaintiff proved nothing. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeal treated the trial court's ruling as an application of a per se rule that evidence from employees with other supervisors was irrelevant to proving discrimination in an ADEA case. It reversed the district court, determined that the evidence offered was relevant and not unduly prejudicial, and remanded for a new trial.
The Supreme Court dealt with this case on more of a procedural issue, rather than a substantive ruling. Specifically, the Court noted that the court of appeals failed to give due deference to the trial court. Accordingly, the Supreme Court kicked the case back to the court of appeals and told it to try again.
In remanding, the Court noted that this type of "me too" evidence should not be excluded per se, but rather, must be viewed on a case-by-case basis, to see if it comes in. This is pretty standard stuff -- anyone who's tried one of these cases knows that the issue of evidence exclusion turns on how the parties plan to use it at trial and what other evidence actually comes in at trial. Frequently, preliminary motions excluding evidence are reversed during the course of the trial based on witnesses' testimony and the judge's assessment of what's been proved. Rather than provide a rigid standard, the Court pushed the case back to the trial judge to explain the nature of his rulings.
Neither of these cases is particularly momentous, and neither provides any real guidance for employers. There are still important cases out there to be resolved this term, so stay tuned.