Court Clarifies Federal Summary Judgment Standard in Employment Discrimination Claims

The topic of summary judgment, being procedural, is not frequently a topic of a post.  It is discussed, of course, because, short of settlement, summary judgment is the way most employment-related claims avoid going to trial.

But summary judgment has recently been in the news with the General Assembly's passages of two bills that would override Tennessee Supreme Court decisions on summary judgment and how to analyze employment discrimination and/or retaliation claims in ruling on a motion for summary judgment.

For that reason, I thought the perspective of the federal court of appeals in St. Louis on summary judgment in employment discrimination claims would be of interest.  (It is also a slow employment news day.)  Two applicants brought a failure to hire claim against the Rochester, Minnesota fire department.   After losing the claim in the trial court, they appealed and a three judge panel ruled in their favor.  The full court, on the city's motion, agreed to reconsider the panel's ruling.  The decision on the merits divided the court; one judge made the difference in affirming the dismissal of the failure to hire claims.  

While they split on whether a trial was needed, all of the judges agreed that the same summary judgment rules apply to a discrimination or retaliation claim.

Summary judgment procedure is properly regarded not as a disfavored procedural shortcut, but rather as an integral part of the Federal Rules as a whole, which are designed “to secure the just, speedy and  inexpensive determination of every action.”

Celotex Corp., 477 U.S. at 327 (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 1). Because summary judgment is not disfavored and is designed for “every action,” panel statements to the contrary are unauthorized and should not be followed. There is no “discrimination case exception” to the application of summary judgment, which is  a useful pretrial tool to determine whether any case, including one alleging discrimination, merits a trial.

What made the decision interesting (at least to legal wonks like me) was that the court specifically and unequivocally disavowed a number of the court's previous decisions that had said summary judgment in employment discrimination cases should “seldom” or “sparingly” be granted, not in “very close” cases, only “with caution,” or after being “particularly deferential” to the employee.

I suppose it always depends on your point of view.