After a tumultuous year of hotly contested and widely significant labor and employment cases in the Supreme Court, this year’s current docket may look tame in comparison.
Last term, the court heard several very important labor and employment cases that split the court 5-4, largely along ideological lines. These cases included Gross v. FBL Financial Services, where the court ruled that employees must show that age discrimination was the direct cause of an adverse employment decision rather than just one factor, 14 Penn Plaza v. Pyett, where the court held unions can agree that the employees they represent will arbitrate their discrimination claims rather than bringing these claims in court, and, of course, Ricci v. DeStefano, where the court held, in the widely publicized and controversial decision, that white firefighters were unfairly denied promotions when the city of New Haven discarded a promotional test based on the racial makeup of the successful test takers.
