The second case, Staub v. Proctor Hospital, No. 09-400, concerned the interpretation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on membership in or an obligation to perform “uniformed service.” The law is similar to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, sex and other factors.

Vincent Staub, an Army reservist and a civilian technician at an Illinois hospital, sued after he was fired by the hospital, saying his military status was a motivating factor in his termination. There was evidence that two of Mr. Staub’s supervisors were hostile to him because his military duties had caused him to be absent from work one weekend a month and two or three weeks a year.

But it was not clear that the human resources officer who actually fired Mr. Staub knew of or shared that animus.

A jury awarded Mr. Staub about $58,000, but the federal appeals court in Chicago reversed, saying the connection between the supervisors’ hostility and the human resources official’s action was too attenuated. The question before the Supreme Court was what a plaintiff in these circumstances needs to prove when pursuing what the courts call a “cat’s paw” theory.

(The term, Justice Antonin Scalia explained in his decision for the court, “derives from a fable conceived by Aesop, put into verse by La Fontaine in 1679 and injected into United States employment discrimination law by” Judge Richard A. Posner in 1990. In the fable, a monkey persuades a cat to retrieve roasting chestnuts from a fire. The cat burns its paws, and the monkey gets the chestnuts.)

Justice Scalia said that the appeals court’s approach was too mechanical and that companies may be held liable where one employee lays the groundwork for another’s decision to fire a worker. He left to the appeals court whether to reinstate the jury verdict in Mr. Staub’s case or order a new trial.

Justice Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that he agreed with the result reached by the majority but would give employers more leeway than the majority had.

Categories: FOIA
Supreme Court, 8-0, rejects privacy rights for corporations

The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected a lower court decision which granted corporations personal privacy rights under the Freedom of Information Act.

In most instances, a "person" under federal law includes corporations as well as human beings. However, in a colorful opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that even if a person might be a company, it did not follow that "personal privacy" includes privacy for businesses.

Adjectives typically reflect the meaning of corresponding nouns, but not always. Sometimes they acquire distinct meanings of their own. The noun “crab” refers variously to a crustacean and a type of apple, while the related adjective “crabbed” can refer to handwriting that is “difficult to read,”... “corny” can mean “using familiar and stereotyped formulas believed to appeal to the unsophisticated,” ... which has little to do with “corn,”...(“the seeds of any of the cereal grasses used for food”); and while “crank” is “a part of anaxis bent at right angles,” “cranky” can mean “given to fretful fussiness.

Roberts said the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that rejected AT&T's argument for corporate privacy, had the better argument. (Read the opinion here.)

What is significant is that, in ordinary usage, a noun and its adjective form may have meanings as disparate as any two unrelated words. The FCC’s argument that “personal” does not, in fact, derive from the English word “person,” but instead developed along its own etymological path...simply highlights the shortcomings of AT&T’s proposed rule....When it comes to the word “personal,” there is little support for the notion that it denotes corporations, even in the legal context.

Roberts also had this parting shot for AT&T: "We trust that AT&T will not take it personally."

Justice Elena Kagan didn't take part in the case, due to her prior role as Solicitor General when the case was in the lower courts.