Opinion ID: 2295666
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Plaintiff's Ultimate Burden of Persuasion

Text: When there exists credible evidence having probative force to counter evidence constituting a prima facie case of unlawful discrimination, the judge must move to the third step of evaluating the whole evidence. On a disparate treatment claim, he may be assisted in this third step evaluation by the existence of affirmative evidence that the nondiscriminatory reason offered by the defendant for rejecting the plaintiff is a pretext for what actually was a discriminatory purpose. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, supra 411 U.S. at 804, 93 S.Ct. 1817. Affirmative evidence of pretext includes facts as to prior instances of the defendant's discrimination against women and statistics as to the defendant's policy and practice of hiring or (as here) not hiring women. Id. at 804-05, 93 S.Ct. 1817. See also Sweeney v. Board of Trustees of Keene State College, 604 F.2d 106 (1st Cir. 1979) (affirming decision that female plaintiff proved defendant's justifications to be pretext). The judge may also be assisted in his evaluation by the strength of the inference of unlawful discrimination arising from the prima facie case, and by his assessment of the witnesses' credibility. On a disparate impact claim, even if there exists some evidence that the defendant's job requirements or tests are validated as job related, the judge may take into account the existence of affirmative evidence that the job requirements or tests are not job related or that they are not predictive of or significantly correlated with important elements of work behavior. See note 18 above. Alternatively, there may be affirmative evidence that other selection devices, without a similarly undesirable racial or sexual effect, would also assure safe and effective work performance. Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, supra 422 U.S. at 425, 95 S.Ct. 2362. Such affirmative evidence would have probative force to show that the defendant was using his selection device as a pretext for discrimination. Id. The plaintiff's ultimate burden of persuasion does not require her to establish that she was rejected solely because of her sex; no more is required to be shown than that sex was a but for factor in her rejection. McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U.S. 273, 282 n. 10, 96 S.Ct. 2574, 49 L.Ed.2d 493 (1976). The Superior Court thus erred here in requiring plaintiffs Hall and Bernard to show that they were denied certification merely because they were female, an error similar to the one committed in the jury instruction in Wells v. Franklin Broadcasting Corp., supra , to the effect that Wells could prevail under the Maine Human Rights Act only if he proved his firing was solely because of his age. Id. at 772. In Wells, this court held (subsequent to the Superior Court's decision in the case now at bar) that even if more than one factor affects the decision to dismiss an employee, the employee may recover if one factor is his age and in fact it made a difference in determining whether he was to be retained or discharged. If an employee would not have been dismissed but for his age, the existence of other reasonable grounds for his discharge does not relieve the employer from liability under the applicable statutory provisions. Id. at 773. Thus, if on the entirety of the evidence the judge concludes that the reasons claimed by defendants to be legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for the rejection of plaintiffs were in fact pretexts for discrimination  that their sex was a determinative factor in that rejection  then plaintiffs have met their ultimate burden to prove employment discrimination.