The U.S. Supreme Court last week broadened the potential liability of employers for job discrimination, ruling, 8-0, that employers may be held liable when an unbiased supervisor fires an employee based on the actions of a biased lower-level manager.
The justices, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, resolved long-running confusion in the lower courts over the so-called cat’s-paw theory of job discrimination under which an employer can be held liable for the animus of a supervisor who did not make the ultimate employment decision.
