Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins

In Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), a female candidate for partnership at a national accounting firm was passed over for reconsideration the following year. She sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 2000e, et seq.) The United States Supreme Court acknowledged that there are many cases in which an employer has legitimate and illegitimate motives in making an employment decision, and held that if a plaintiff alleging a title VII violation proves that gender played a motivating part in an employment decision, the employer may avoid liability by proving by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have made the same decision even if it had not taken the plaintiff's gender into account. (490 U.S. at p. 258.) The plurality held that once a plaintiff demonstrates that the adverse decision is the result of mixed motives (i.e., that it is the 'result of multiple factors, at least one of which is illegitimate' and the illegitimate factor played 'a motivating part' in the adverse decision), the burden shifts to the employer to persuade the jury by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have reached the same decision even if the protected trait had not been considered. Price Waterhouse, 490 U.S. at 244-45, 260, 109 S. Ct. 1775 (plurality opinion). This shift in the burden of persuasion makes an employer potentially liable upon a causation showing -- that an illegitimate criterion was a motivating, although not a determinative, factor in the adverse employment decision -- that is less exacting than the causation test in the usual 'pretext' case, where consideration of a protected trait must be shown to be a determinative factor in the adverse action. The Price Waterhouse plurality opinion also created an affirmative defense for the employer that, if proven, absolved the employer completely of any Title VII liability."