Supreme Court of the United States · 2008-05-27
Case and law context
Role: rule-announced; posture: Certiorari limited to whether §1981 encompasses retaliation; Court affirms Seventh Circuit remand for trial, without deciding factual sufficiency.; result: remanded; claim:
Instances and excluded annotation blocks
| Case | Element | Holding and scope | Variant | Exact source quotations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /us/553/0442-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2008 | Opposition to racial impairment of contract rights | not_reached Excluded from merits counts rule-announced / merits party: Humphries; opinion: majority; subject: party=Humphries; opinion=majority Advocacy of another employee’s contract-related racial rights is within statutory protection. No finding here establishes that Humphries proved advocacy, knowledge, retaliatory injury, or causation; factual retaliation claim returns for trial. | protected-advocacy/coworker-racial-dismissal | The case before us arises out of a claim by respondent, Hedrick G. Humphries, a former assistant manager of a Cracker Barrel restaurant, that CBOCS West, Inc. (Cracker Barrel’s owner), dismissed him (1) because of racial bias (Humphries is a black man) and (2) because he had complained to managers that a fellow assistant manager had dismissed another black employee, Venus Green, for race-based reasons.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_553.jsonl#/us/553/0442-01; Unicode character offsets [584:989] (end exclusive); SHA-256 c96da3ddb7fc97b960047f291989cb0575a702127ad112659b4395b87c3cebd3.A longstanding civil rights law, first enacted just after the Civil War, provides that “[a]ll persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts ... as is enjoyed by white citizens.” Rev. Stat. § 1977, 42 U. S. C. § 1981(a). The basic question before us is whether the provision encompasses a complaint of retaliation against a person who has complained about a violation of another person’s contract-related “right.” We conclude that it does.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_553.jsonl#/us/553/0442-01; Unicode character offsets [51:581] (end exclusive); SHA-256 c96da3ddb7fc97b960047f291989cb0575a702127ad112659b4395b87c3cebd3.We consequently hold that 42 U. S. C. § 1981 encompasses claims of retaliation.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_553.jsonl#/us/553/0442-01; Unicode character offsets [25226:25305] (end exclusive); SHA-256 c96da3ddb7fc97b960047f291989cb0575a702127ad112659b4395b87c3cebd3. |
| /us/553/0442-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2008 | Compensatory equitable punitive and fee remedies | satisfied Excluded from merits counts applied / procedural basis: law; theory: independence of statutory remedial avenues; opinion: majority; subject: theory=independence of statutory remedial avenues; opinion=majority The Court applies the independent-remedies rule to reject CBOCS’s procedural-circumvention objection. Satisfied [law] records that decided legal proposition, not a damages award or factual liability. Procedural scope excludes this block from merits-instance counts; the existing remedies ID is retained with a typed theory qualifier. | parallel-remedies/title-vii-independent-section1981 | Regardless, we have previously acknowledged a “necessary overlap” between Title VII and § 1981. Patterson, 491 U. S., at 181. We have added that the “remedies available under Title VII and under §1981, although related, and although directed to most of the same ends, are separate, distinct, and independent.” Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U. S. 454,461 (1975). We have pointed out that Title VII provides important administrative remedies and other benefits that § 1981 lacks. See id., at 457-458 (detailing the benefits of Title VII to those aggrieved by race-based employment discrimination). And we have concluded that “Title VII was designed to supplement, rather than supplant, existing laws and institutions relating to employment discrimination.” Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U. S. 36, 48-49 (1974). In a word, we have previously held that the “overlap” reflects congressional design. See ibid. We have no reason to reach a different conclusion in this case.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_553.jsonl#/us/553/0442-01; Unicode character offsets [20427:21416] (end exclusive); SHA-256 c96da3ddb7fc97b960047f291989cb0575a702127ad112659b4395b87c3cebd3. |
| /us/553/0442-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2008 | Compensatory equitable punitive and fee remedies | not_reached Excluded from merits counts applied / merits theory: actual damages fees or equitable relief; subject: theory=actual damages fees or equitable relief No individual relief amount or entitlement is decided. This separate block keeps that unresolved issue apart from the decided independence rule; no quote is duplicated or rewritten. | Unspecified variant | No source quotation recorded for this block. |
Court interpretations recorded from this case
interpretation
We consequently hold that 42 U. S. C. § 1981 encompasses claims of retaliation.
/us/553/0442-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2008
We consequently hold that 42 U. S. C. § 1981 encompasses claims of retaliation.Source:
docroot/ir/caselaw/us_553.jsonl#/us/553/0442-01; Unicode character offsets [25226:25305] (end exclusive); SHA-256 c96da3ddb7fc97b960047f291989cb0575a702127ad112659b4395b87c3cebd3.CBOCS holds that advocacy for another person’s racially impaired contractual rights can support retaliation. The word retaliation is absent from §1981’s text; protection is authoritative judicial interpretation, not a statutory quotation. A generic workplace complaint unrelated to race/§1981 rights does not automatically qualify.