The Supreme Court just adopted The Simple Injury Standard to identify discriminatory terms and conditions of employment when it ruled unanimously that an employer's act of transferring an employee "from one job to another because she is a woman" (or another protracted trait) is actionable discrimination under Title VII.
The case, Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, states that discrimination is actionable so long as the employee can identify "some harm" regardless if that harm is "significant" because to “discriminate against” refers to “differences in treatment that injure” employees. Specifically, in Muldrow, the plaintiff sued because her "terms [or] conditions" of employment were changed, even though her "rank and pay remained the same," because her new position changed her "responsibilities, perks, and schedule," based on who she was. SCOTUS explained that this "meet[s] that test with room to spare" in overturning the lower court's dismissal based on the now extinct "materially significant disadvantage" standard.
In Muldrow, the simple injuries experienced that support a discrimination claim were:
- "She was moved from a plainclothes job in a prestigious specialized division giving her substantial responsibility over priority investigations and frequent opportunity to work with police commanders."
- "She was moved to a uniformed job supervising one district’s patrol officers, in which she was less involved in high-visibility matters and primarily performed administrative work."
- Her schedule became less regular, often requiring her to work weekends; and she lost her take-home car."
Specifically, SCOTUS held that "[a]lthough an employee must show some harm from a forced transfer to prevail in a Title VII suit, she need not show that the injury satisfies a significance test." That is the new test, resolving a split in the Circuit Courts, as to the definition of an adverse employment action for an employment discrimination claim.
