Supreme Court to decide how an employee must prove Title VII retaliation

What makes retaliation the most common discrimination claim in America?

I suspect it’s because other forms of discrimination (e.g., race, gender, disability) are more difficult to prove and don’t always result in an adverse employment action, such as termination of employment. And since most people like to keep their jobs, they’re more reluctant to rock the boat.

Conversely, retaliation always includes adverse action — quite often a firing — and follows what the law terms a “protected activity” (opposition to discrimination or participation in the statutory complaint process). So, you have a situation where an employee suspects discrimination is afoot, complains about it, and then gets fired. 

Retaliation salt rubbed in an open discrimination wound. 

So, any Supreme Court ruling affecting the standard for proving retaliation is big news.

Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed (here) to decide what level of proof a plaintiff must establish to prevail on a retaliation claim. Here is the question presented to the Court:

Whether Title VII’s retaliation provision and similarly worded statutes require a plaintiff
to prove but-for causation (i.e., that an employer would not have taken an adverse
employment action but for an improper motive), or instead require only proof that the
employer had a mixed motive (i.e., that an improper motive was one of multiple reasons for
the employment action).