In Robinson v. Shell Oil Co. (1997) 519 U.S. 337, the defendant fired the plaintiff and he filed a claim of racial bias with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The plaintiff applied for job with another company, but when the defendant was contacted by a prospective employer, it gave the plaintiff a negative job reference. The plaintiff then sued, alleging this action constituted unlawful retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The United States Supreme Court held the Act's antiretaliation provision "making it unlawful 'for an employer to discriminate against any of his employees or applicants for employment' who have either availed themselves of the Act's protections or assisted others in so doing . . . includes former employees, such that petitioner may bring suit against his former employer for postemployment actions . . . ." (Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., supra, 519 U.S. at p. 339.) Robinson found the statutory term "employee" ambiguous in this context, noting neither the Act's definition of "employee" nor that term's use in the antiretaliation provision contained a "temporal qualifier," and "a number of other provisions in Title VII use the term 'employees' to mean something more inclusive or different that 'current employees.'" (Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., supra, 519 U.S. at pp. 341, 342.) In resolving this statutory ambiguity, the court again cited to the provisions "plainly contemplating that former employees will make use of the remedial mechanisms of Title VII" (id. at p. 345), the Act's "primary purpose of . . . maintaining unfettered access to those remedial mechanisms" (id. at p. 346), and the EEOC's position that "excluding . . . former employees from the protection of the Civil Rights Act's antiretaliation provision would undermine the effectiveness of the Act by allowing the threat of postemployment retaliation to deter victims of discrimination from complaining to the EEOC and . . . provide a perverse incentive for employers to fire employees who might bring . . . claims" (ibid).