On March 1, 2011, in the case of Staub v. Proctor Hospital,1 the U.S. Supreme Court addressed an issue that long has been vexing to employment law practitioners: Under what circumstances will an employer be liable for an adverse employment action where the decision-maker is unbiased, but relies on information furnished by a biased supervisor? In an unanimous decision,2 the Court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, held that an employer is liable under a “cat’s paw” theory when a supervisor is motivated by bias, performs an act that is intended to cause an adverse employment action, and that act is a proximate cause of the ultimate adverse employment action.

While the statute at issue was the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA), the text of the opinion suggests that the framework adopted by the Court for resolving “cat’s paw” claims may be applied to claims brought under certain other employment discrimination statutes, most notably Title VII. Indeed, in framing the issue in the Court’s opinion, Justice Scalia stated that the Court was considering “the circumstances under which an employer may be held liable for employment discrimination based on the discriminatory animus of an employee who influenced, but did not make, the ultimate employment decision,”3 without specifically limiting the circumstances to claims brought under USERRA.

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