The United States Supreme Court, on March 1, 2011, issued an important decision in Staub v. Proctor Hospital, holding that employers may be liable under the “cat’s paw” theory, for an unbiased supervisor’s firing of an employee, when based upon the actions of another biased supervisor. The Court remanded this matter to the Court below.

The “cat’s paw” theory, in employment discrimination cases, is where a supervisor does not improperly fire an employee, but the improper motives of the non-decision maker are imputed to the decision maker. Staub claimed that the reasons for his termination were because of his military association, and evidence established that his direct supervisor had a strong animus against him based upon his military reserve status. What ultimately led to Staub’s firing was an alleged violation of company policy reported by Staub’s supervisor to the human resources supervisor. The human resources supervisor based her decision to terminate based upon Staub’s personnel file which contained his supervisor’s complaints and evidence of misconduct; she was unaware of the animus between Staub and his supervisor.

Staub’s lawsuit was filed under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, and under the “cat’s paw” theory, Staub needed to show that his supervisor with military-related animus gave false information to the human resource supervisor which led to his firing. Even though the human resource supervisor had no improper purpose in firing Staub, and was unaware of Staub’s supervisor’s attitude, the employer may still be liable since the human resource director’s firing of Staub was based upon the actions of the biased supervisor.

This opinion clarifies that the independent judgment by a decision maker does not prevent an earlier agent’s discriminatory action from being the cause of the harm. Therefore, it is important that employers continually monitor and investigate before allowing adverse employment actions to be taken against employees. If employers rely only upon the opinion of a supervisor and that supervisor is later found to have a discriminatory animus, the employer may be held liable for the harm suffered by the employee.

Laddey, Clark & Ryan regularly performs internal investigations and employee trainings for its clients.

Employment and Labor Practice Group