Opinion ID: 803961
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Pattern-or-Practice Method of Proof

Text: As an initial matter, we address the question whether the method of proof described in International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324 (1997), and known as the “Teamsters” or “pattern-or-practice” method, was available to the nonclass private plaintiffs in this case.7 We conclude that it was not and that the judgment as to pattern or practice must for this reason be reversed. We emphasize, however, that evidence that the Port Authority engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination—in the ordinary sense of those words, rather than in the technical sense describing a theory of liability for discrimination—remains relevant in assessing whether the plaintiffs proved discrimination using the individual disparate treatment and disparate impact methods of proof. The phrase “pattern or practice” appears only once in Title VII—in a section that authorizes the government to pursue injunctive relief against an employer “engaged in a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of any of the rights secured by” the statute. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-6. Notwithstanding statute of limitations, is subject to waiver, estoppel, and equitable tolling.”). 7 The parties did not address this issue before the district court and do not raise it on appeal. Nonetheless, we are not bound by parties’ effective stipulations on questions of law, see U.S. Nat’l Bank of Or. v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 446–48 (1993), and in this case we exercise our discretion to consider this issue in order to provide guidance in a complicated area. 17 the Supreme Court’s recognition in Teamsters that this language “was not intended as a term of art, and the words reflect only their usual meaning,” Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 336 n.16, the phrase is often used in a technical sense to refer either to this unique form of liability available in government actions under § 2000e-6, see, e.g., EEOC v. Shell Oil Co., 466 U.S. 54, 67–68 n.19, 70, 80 (1984), or to the burden-shifting framework set out in Teamsters and available both to the government in § 2000e-6 litigation and to class-action plaintiffs in private actions alleging discrimination, see, e.g., Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541, 2552 n.7 (2011). We begin with § 2000e-6. The building blocks of liability pursuant to this provision—which provides for prospective injunctive relief where the government establishes that an employer is engaged in a “pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment” of rights secured by Title VII—differ from those that provide the foundation for typical, private-party Title VII litigation. To establish an employer’s liability for discrimination in violation of Title VII, a private plaintiff ordinarily must show that an employer took an adverse employment action against him or her because of his or her race, or on account of another protected ground. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802 (1973); Aulicino v. N.Y. City Dep’t of Homeless Servs., 580 F.3d 73, 80 (2d Cir. 2009). In § 2000e-6 litigation, by contrast, the government need not 18 demonstrate specific losses to specific individuals to establish that injunctive relief is appropriate. The government must “prove more than the mere occurrence of isolated or ‘accidental’ or sporadic discriminatory acts”: it must prove that unlawful discrimination “was the company’s standard operating procedure.” Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 336. Once established, however, “a court’s finding of a pattern or practice justifies an award of prospective relief” even absent proof of losses to specific individuals. Id. at 361. The parties here use the term “pattern or practice” to refer not to an element of a § 2000e-6 claim, but to the method of proof that the Supreme Court endorsed in Teamsters for the adjudication of such claims. This method of proof, however, originated in the class action context, in Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U.S. 747 (1976). The Supreme Court in Franks determined that once the private plaintiffs in the class action there “carried their burden of demonstrating the existence of a discriminatory hiring pattern and practice by the [employer] . . . , the burden [was] upon [the employer] to prove that individuals who reappl[ied] were not in fact victims of previous hiring discrimination.” Id. at 772. The Court in Franks used the phrase “pattern and practice” to refer to the common question of fact (whether the employer had engaged in a practice of discriminatory hiring) to be litigated by class plaintiffs, and apparently viewed its holding as no more than an application of McDonnell 19 Douglas’ burden-shifting framework in the class-action context. See Franks, 424 U.S. at 773 (citing McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. 792). The Teamsters Court thereafter determined that the Franks burdenshifting framework for certain class actions should also apply to government “pattern or practice” suits brought under § 2000e-6: Although not all class actions will necessarily follow the Franks model, the nature of a [§ 2000e-6] pattern-or-practice suit brings it squarely within our holding in Franks. The plaintiff in a pattern-or-practice action is the Government, and its initial burden is to demonstrate that unlawful discrimination has been a regular procedure or policy followed by an employer or group of employers. At the initial, “liability” stage of a pattern-or-practice suit the Government is not required to offer evidence that each person for whom it will ultimately seek relief was a victim of the employer’s discriminatory policy. . . . .... When the Government seeks individual relief for the victims of the discriminatory practice, a district court must usually conduct additional proceedings after the liability phase of the trial to determine the scope of individual relief. The petitioners’ contention in this case is that if the Government has not, in the course of proving a pattern or practice, already brought forth specific evidence that each individual was discriminatorily denied an employment opportunity, it must carry that burden at the second, “remedial” stage of trial. That basic contention was rejected in the Franks case. . . . The proof of the pattern or practice supports an inference that any particular employment decision, during the period in which the discriminatory policy was in force, was made in pursuit of that policy. The Government need only show that an alleged individual discriminatee unsuccessfully applied for a job and therefore was a potential victim of the proved discrimination. As in Franks, the burden then rests on the employer to demonstrate that the 20 individual applicant was denied an employment opportunity for lawful reasons. Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 360–62 (internal citation and footnotes omitted). Since Teamsters, this burden-shifting framework has been known as the “Teamsters method of proof” or the “pattern-or-practice method.” See, e.g., Celestine v. Petroleos de Venezuella SA, 266 F.3d 343, 355 (5th Cir. 2001) (“A pattern or practice case is not a separate and free-standing cause of action . . . , but is really merely another method by which disparate treatment can be shown.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Lowery v. Circuit City Stores, Inc., 158 F.3d 742, 760 (4th Cir. 1998) (“The courts of appeals have . . . permitted pattern or practice class action suits using the Teamsters method of proof.”), vacated on other grounds, 527 U.S. 1031 (1999).8 In sum, unlike in a typical individual disparate treatment suit, “a plaintiff’s burden under the pattern-or-practice method requires the plaintiff to prove only the existence of a discriminatory policy rather than all elements of a prima facie case of discrimination”—but “under the pattern-or-practice method, only prospective relief [is] available, unless the 8 Although the Teamsters framework is not a freestanding cause of action, courts—including the Supreme Court—sometimes loosely refer to the Teamsters method of proof as a “pattern-or-practice claim.” See, e.g., Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 115 n.9 (2002) (“We have no occasion here to consider the timely filing question with respect to ‘pattern-or-practice’ claims brought by private litigants as none are at issue here.”). 21 plaintiffs offer[] additional proof.” Semsroth v. City of Wichita, 304 F. App’x 707, 716 (10th Cir. 2008) (describing the reasoning in Lowery, 158 F.3d at 761). Permitting private plaintiffs to use the pattern-or-practice method of proof outside the class action context would require us to extend this method beyond its current application. This we decline to do. Such an extension would allow nonclass private plaintiffs who have shown a pattern or practice of discrimination (but have not made out a disparate impact claim) to shift the burden to employers to prove that they did not discriminate against a particular individual. But this would conflict with the Supreme Court’s oft-repeated holding in the context of disparate-treatment, private nonclass litigation that “[t]he ultimate burden of pursuading the trier of fact that the defendant intentionally discriminated against the plaintiff remains at all times with the plaintiff.” Tex. Dep’t of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 253 (1981). To be sure, proof that an employer engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination may be of substantial help in demonstrating an employer’s liability in the individual case. But such proof cannot relieve the plaintiff of the need to establish each element of his or her claim. We note that the district court in this case did not instruct the jury that a finding of a pattern or practice of discrimination shifted the burden of persuasion. Rather, the verdict sheet instructed the jury that each individual 22 plaintiff was required to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that he was discriminated against as part of the pattern or practice. This instruction only underscores, however, why there was no need for the jury to make a specific finding regarding a pattern or practice of discrimination in this private, nonclass suit, as opposed to determining directly whether each individual plaintiff had been intentionally discriminated against. Where, as here, there are only individual, nonclass disparate-treatment claims, a district court need not and should not instruct the jury that a common pattern of discrimination is an element of liability. For these reasons, all of our sister circuits to consider the question have held that the pattern-or-practice method of proof is not available to private, nonclass plaintiffs. See Semsroth v. City of Wichita, 304 F. App’x 707, 715 (10th Cir. 2008); Davis v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consol., 516 F.3d 955, 967–69 (11th Cir. 2008); Bacon v. Honda of Am. Mfg., 370 F.3d 565, 575 (6th Cir. 2004); Celestine v. Petroleos de Venezuella SA, 266 F.3d 343, 355–56 (5th Cir. 2001); Gilty v. Vill. of Oak Park, 919 F.2d 1247, 1252 (7th Cir. 1990); Lowery v. Circuit City Stores, Inc., 158 F.3d 742, 761 (4th Cir. 1998), vacated on other grounds, 527 U.S. 1031 (1999); see also Schuler v. PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, 739 F. Supp. 2d 1, 6 n.2 (D.D.C. 2010) (“Courts in every other Circuit that has touched on this issue have indicated that an individual plaintiff cannot maintain a pattern and 23 practice claim.”) (collecting cases); 1 Lex Larson et al., Employment Discrimination § 8.01[3], at 8-13 (2d ed. 2011) (“[C]ourts have refused to permit individuals to use the pattern or practice proof structure for claims of individual discrimination . . . .”). We have suggested as much, albeit in dicta. See Brown v. Coach Stores, Inc., 163 F.3d 706, 711 (2d Cir. 1998). For the foregoing reasons, we now hold that the pattern-or-practice method of proof is not available to nonclass, private plaintiffs in cases such as the one before us. Evidence of an employer’s general practice of discrimination may be highly relevant to an individual disparate treatment or to a disparate impact claim. Outside the class context, however, private plaintiffs may not invoke the Teamsters method of proof as an independent and distinct method of establishing liability. The district court erred in submitting this method of proof to the jury as a basis on which it could hold the Port Authority liable.