Court Opinion

ID: 9790335
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:51:52.066077+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:28.859515
License: Public Domain

RANSOM, Justice (specially concurring). I concur with the result reached in this opinion, but write specially to question any consideration of whether the “mixed-motives” aspect of the Price Waterhouse decision is applicable to the State Human Rights Act. See 490 U.S. at 243-47, 109 S.Ct. at 1787-88 (Brennan, J., with whom Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens, JJ., concurred) (when plaintiff in Title VII case proves employer’s decision was based on a mixture of legitimate and illegitimate considerations, the burden of persuasion shifts to the employer to prove that it would have made the same decision even had it not allowed illegitimate considerations to play a role in decision). Cf. Id. at 258-62, 109 S.Ct. at 1795-96 (White, J., concurring in judgment). Counsel for both parties conceded at oral argument that instruction thirteen was merely a definitional instruction consistent with the Price Waterhouse discussion of the concept of “sex stereotyping” as it relates to employment discrimination cases under federal law. See Id. at 248-52, 109 S.Ct. at 1790-91 (in enacting Title VII, Congress intended to eliminate sex stereotypes as a basis for disparate treatment of men and women in employer’s decisional process). Indeed, the text of instruction thirteen cannot reasonably be read to shift the burden of persuasion to the employer as might be appropriate in a- true “mixed-motives” case. Nowhere in this case was Price Waterhouse raised or argued as an appropriate methodology for assigning burdens to the parties. Moreover, as stated by the author, counsel for appellant conceded that, if substantial evidence was presented in this case of sex stereotyping connected with the decision to lay off appellee, then instruction thirteen was a proper definitional instruction. I agree there was substantial evidence of such stereotyping in this case; therefore, I would affirm the trial court.