Cat Paw Claims

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202483888313

The justices also ruled 8-0 that corporations could not claim a "personal privacy" exemption to keep certain documents from being released under the federal Freedom of Information Act.


In the employment case, 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.


The cat's paw scenario played out in Staub v. Proctor Hospital. Vincent Staub, an angiography technician at the hospital, was a member of the U.S. Army Reserve. His reserve duties required him to attend drill one weekend per month and to train full time for two to three weeks per year. His immediate supervisor and her supervisor were hostile to Staub's military obligations. They made that hostility known to him and co-workers through comments, by scheduling Staub for additional shifts without notice, and filing false disciplinary warnings in his file.

In 2004, Proctor's vice president for human relations, relying on an accusation by Staub's supervisor and after reviewing his personnel report, fired him. Staub sued under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA), charging that his firing was motivated by hostility to his reservist obligations. Under the act, an employer is liable for an adverse job action if the employee's military or reserve membership is a "motivating factor" in the employer's action.

Scalia wrote: "The employer is at fault because one of its agents committed an action based on discriminatory animus that was intended to cause, and did in fact cause, an adverse employment decision."