SCOTUS Employment Law-Palooza - Case(s) of the Week #149

I couldn't do it. I absolutely could not pick just one case and run with it for the COTW. Instead, I'm going to take a look back at this crazy week of important Supreme Court employment law developments.

We started off with a bang, as SCOTUS issued two wins for employers in what I'll call "pure" employment law cases:

• First, the Court adopted a narrow definition of "supervisor" for Title VII employer liability analysis. Supervisors must be capable of taking "tangible employment actions."
• Second, the Court held that Title VII retaliation claims require "but for" causation as opposed to the lower "mixed motive" (or "motivating factor") standard.

Before the Court even started handing down opinions on Monday, it issued an order with some employment law implications:

• The Court granted certiorari in Noel Canning. This is technically a constitutional law case about the recess appointment power of the president . . . but the recess appointments in question are NLRB appointments so there are labor issues at play.
• Things were so crazy that SCOTUS granted cert in a Labor Management Act case and I didn't even have an opportunity to blog about it. But check out the SCOTUSblog page for Unite Here Local 355 v. Mulhall (about bargaining away labor rights - employer promised not to oppose union representation and granted union access to its property, and union agreed to forego rights to picket, boycott, etc.).

Finally, we had some not-quite-employment-law cases that still drew some interest from the employment law crowd.

• We got a decision in Fisher v. Univ. of Texas - Austin, holding that courts must apply a strict version of strict scrutiny when analyzing university affirmative action policies.
• We got two decisions regarding same-sex marriage, including one on Prop 8 and one on DOMA. At first glance, they don't appear to have much of an impact on employers in states that don't recognize same-sex marriages . . . then again, there will be some complications to work through.

I'm not saying this was the most important week in employment law history . . . but in terms of quantity of Supreme Court employment law-related decisions, it has to be one of the busiest.