Court Opinion

ID: 9428896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:05.112155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:15.976625
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
After finding that petitioner Ford Motor Company had discriminated unlawfully against Judy Gaddis and Rebecca Starr because of their sex, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s backpay award to the two women “as a proper exercise of discretion founded on not clearly erroneous factual determinations.” 645 F. 2d 183, 201 (CA4 1981). The Court today reverses this unremarkable holding with a wide-ranging advisory ruling stretching far beyond the confines of this case. .The Court’s rule provides employers who *242have engaged in unlawful hiring practices with a unilateral device to cut off their backpay liability to the victims of their past discrimination.
To justify its new rule, the Court mischaracterizes the holding of the Court of Appeals, undertakes an intricate economic analysis of hypothetical situations not presented here, and invokes the rights of “‘innocent third parties/” ante, at 239, who are not before the Court. By so doing, the Court not only supplants traditional district court discretion to mold equitable relief, but also ensures that Judy Gaddis and Rebecca Starr — the only Title VII claimants whose rights are at issue in this lawsuit — will not be made whole for injury they indisputably have suffered. I find the Court’s ruling both unnecessary and unfair. I dissent.
I
A
The Court frames the question presented as “whether an employer charged with discrimination in hiring can toll the continuing accrual of backpay liability . . . simply by unconditionally offering the [Title VII] claimant the job previously denied, or whether the employer also must offer seniority retroactive to the date of the alleged discrimination.” Ante, at 220. In my view, the Court simply and completely misstates the issue. The question before us is not which of two inflexible standards should govern accrual of backpay liability in all Title VII cases, but whether the District Court’s award of backpay relief to Gaddis and Starr in this case constituted an abuse of discretion.
The Court makes frequent and puzzling reference to the “onerous burden[s]” and “sacrifice demanded by the lower court’s rule.” Ante, at 239, 240. See also ante, at 227 (“the lower court’s rule”); ante, at 229 (“[t]he rule adopted by the court below”); ibid, (“the Court of Appeals’ rule”); ante, at 230, n. 12 (“the rule applied by the court below”); ante, at 238 (“[t]he rule . . . adopted by the court below”); ante, at 241 *243(“the rule adopted by the court below”). In fact, the Court of Appeals adopted no inflexible “rule” at all. Rather, it simply applied the well-settled and flexible principles of appellate review of Title VII remedies prescribed in Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405 (1975), and Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S. 747 (1976).
In Albemarle, this Court directed that, in most Title VII matters, “the standard of [appellate] review will be the familiar one of whether the District Court was ‘clearly erroneous’ in its factual findings and whether it ‘abused’ its traditional discretion to locate ‘a just result’ in light of the circumstances peculiar to the case,” 422 U. S., at 424 (citation omitted). With regard to Title VII backpay relief, however, the Court specified that “ ‘the [district] court has not merely the power but the duty to render a decree which will so far as possible eliminate the discriminatory effects of the past as well as bar like discrimination in the future.’” Id., at 418, quoting Louisiana v. United States, 380 U. S. 145, 154 (1965). To achieve this purpose, “Congress took care to arm the courts with full equitable powers. For it is the historic purpose of equity to ‘secur[e] complete justice.’” 422 U. S., at 418 (citation omitted).1
*244The Court in Albemarle and Franks made clear that, in Title VII cases, the equitable discretion of district courts should be guided by a heavy presumption in favor of full backpay awards. “Rather than limiting the power of district courts to do equity, the presumption insures that complete equity normally will be accomplished.” Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 786 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). By exercising their discretion to award full backpay relief, district courts further two broad purposes underlying Title VII. First, “the reasonably certain prospect of a baekpay award . . . ‘provide[s] the spur or catalyst which causes employers ... to self-examine and to self-evaluate their employment practices and to endeavor to eliminate, so far as possible, the last vestiges’” of discrimination. Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S., at 417-418 (citation omitted). Second, backpay awards “make persons whole for injuries suffered on account of unlawful employment discrimination.” Id., at 418.
Thus, the goal of appellate review is to ensure that the district courts have exercised their remedial discretion in the way that “allow[s] the most complete achievement of the objectives of Title VII that is attainable under the facts and circumstances of the specific case.” Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 770-771. “The courts of appeals must maintain a consistent and principled application of the backpay provision, consonant with [Title VIPs] twin statutory objectives, while at the same time recognizing that the trial court will often have the keener appreciation of those facts and circumstances peculiar to particular cases.” Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S., at 421-422.
B
In this case, the trial court’s findings of fact were uncontroverted. In July 1971, Judy Gaddis and Rebecca Starr sought jobs at petitioner Ford’s automotive parts warehouse in Charlotte, N. C. “Because of their experience, each was qualified to work at Ford as a ‘picker-packer.’” App. to *245Pet. for Cert. A-159 (District Court’s Findings of Fact). Ford’s stated hiring practice was to fill job vacancies at the warehouse by “taking the earliest filed applications first,” and selecting employees by interviewing qualified candidates. Id., at A-157. At the time Gaddis and Starr .applied, however, Ford had never hired any woman to work at the warehouse.2 Id., at A-167 — A-168. When Gaddis and Starr received their application forms, “a receptionist at Ford . . . told them in substance that Ford did not hire women to work in the warehouse.” Id., at A-159.
Despite Gaddis’ persistent requests for job interviews, petitioner interviewed neither woman immediately, supposedly because no job vacancy existed. Id., at A-160 — A-161. The unit supervisor testified: “Ms. Gaddis called me on several occasions and asked if I was hiring, and I said no, ... I just have too much work to do to sit down and interview people if I’m not hiring.” App. 31. Shortly thereafter, however, in August 1971, Ford hired male applicants to fill four job openings. App. to Pet. for Cert. A-159 — A-160. “At least two of the men . . . were offered their jobs after Gaddis and Starr applied.” Id., at A-160 (emphasis in original).
Gaddis filed a sex discrimination charge with respondent EEOC in September 1971. Id., at A-154. In January 1973, Gaddis and Starr were recalled to jobs at a nearby General Motors warehouse. In July 1973, petitioner made a vague job offer first to Gaddis, then to Starr.3 The District Court *246found as a fact that “[t]he offer to the two women was made after Ford learned that a charge of sex discrimination had been filed with the Commission (and was prompted by a desire to bring some women into the warehouse in response to the charge).” Id., at A-162 — A-163.4
Gaddis, and then Starr, turned down petitioner’s job offer. The District Court found that the offer was “refused by both women since they were at that time back at work in the General Motors warehouse, having been recalled to work in Janu*247ary, 1973. Neither woman wished to lose accrued seniority at General Motors and neither wanted to be the only woman employed in the Ford warehouse.” Id., at A-163.
Based on its factual findings, the District Court concluded as a matter of law that “Ford discriminated against . . . Gaddis and Starr on the basis of their sex by failing to employ them in its warehouse in the positions filled in August, 1971.” Id., at A-167. In rulings not contested here, the District Court also found that 10 other women had established prima facie cases of unlawful sex discrimination by Ford. Id., at A-168.
To determine the backpay remedy to which Gaddis and Starr were entitled, the District Court attached no legal significance to the women’s decision to decline beginning employment at Ford nearly two years after they unlawfully had been denied those same jobs and six months after they had begun accumulating seniority elsewhere.5 In the ruling which the Court today implicitly deems an abuse of discretion, the District Court held that “[b]ack pay due to Gaddis and Starr shall not be affected by their refusal to accept the single position offered them in July, 1973, inasmuch as neither would have been confronted by that decision and its implications had both been hired in August, 1971.” Id., at A-170 — A-171.
Applying the standard of review specified in Franks, supra, and Albemarle, supra, the Court of Appeals, 645 F. 2d, *248at 200, affirmed “the district court’s decision as a proper exercise of discretion founded on not clearly erroneous factual determinations.” Id., at 201. In particular, the Court of Appeals found no abuse of discretion in the District Court’s failure to terminate the backpay awards in July 1973.6
The Court of Appeals rested its narrow ruling on two key facts: that “Gaddis and Starr could accept [Ford’s] offer only by forfeiting the seniority they had accumulated at General Motors and without a compensating offer of seniority at Ford to alleviate the effects of the discrimination against them in 1971.” Id., at 192. (Emphasis added.) The court expressed no view as to whether Ford’s backpay liability would have been tolled if Gaddis and Starr could have accepted Ford’s job offer without forfeiting seniority accumulated elsewhere. Nor did the Court of Appeals decide whether the women would have been obliged to accept Ford’s offer had it encompassed some compensating offer of seniority, short of fall retroactive seniority.
Contrary to this Court’s suggestion today, the Court of Appeals announced no general rule that an employer’s “backpay liability should be tolled only by the rejection of an offer that includes seniority retroactive to the date on which the alleged discrimination occurred.” Ante, at 228 (emphasis added). The Court of Appeals merely refused to announce a broad new rule, urged by Ford, requiring victims of Title VII discrimination to “accept job offers which include a loss of seniority in order to preserve their back pay rights.” 645 F. 2d, at 192. Such an inflexible approach, the court decided, would frustrate Title VII’s central purposes by permit*249ting employers to present discriminatees with an “intolerable choice.”7 Ibid.
II
The Court today accepts Ford’s invitation, wisely declined by the Court of Appeals, and adopts its broad new rule governing awards of backpay relief in Title VII cases: henceforth, “absent special circumstances, the rejection of an employer’s unconditional job offer ends the accrual of potential backpay liability.”8 Ante, at 241. This ruling is disturbing in four respects.
First: The Court’s new rule is flatly inconsistent with Albemarle’s unambiguous directive “that, given a finding of unlawful discrimination, backpay should be denied only for reasons which, if applied generally, would not frustrate the central statutory purposes of eradicating discrimination throughout the economy and making persons whole for injuries suffered through past discrimination.” 422 U. S., at 421. Applied generally, the Court’s rule interferes with both objectives.
The Court’s approach authorizes employers to make “cheap offers” to the victims of their past discrimination. Employ*250ers may now terminate their backpay liability unilaterally by extending to their discrimination victims offers they cannot reasonably accept. Once an employer has refused to hire a job applicant, and that applicant has mitigated damages by obtaining and accumulating seniority in another job, the employer may offer the applicant the same job that she was denied unlawfully several years earlier. In this very case, for example, Ford offered Gaddis and Starr jobs only after they had obtained employment elsewhere and only because they had filed charges with the EEOC. If, as here, the applicant declines the offer to preserve existing job security, the employer has successfully cut off all future backpay liability to that applicant. By insulating a discriminating employer from proper liability for his discriminatory acts, the Court’s rule reduces his “incentive to shun practices of dubious legality,” id., at 417, and hinders the eradication of discrimination.
The Court’s rule also violates Title VII’s second objective — making victims of discrimination whole. Again, the rule’s anomalies are well illustrated by the facts of this case. Had petitioner not discriminated against Gaddis and Starr, both would have begun to work at Ford in August 1971. By July 1973, both would have accumulated nearly two years of seniority. Because of Ford’s discrimination, however, each experienced long periods of unemployment and temporary employment before obtaining jobs elsewhere.9 The District Court therefore determined that only full backpay awards, mitigated by wages earned or reasonably earnable elsewhere, would make Gaddis and Starr whole.
This Court now truncates those awards simply because Gaddis and Starr refused to accept Ford’s offers of beginning employment in 1973. Yet even if Gaddis and Starr had ac*251cepted those offers, they would not have been made whole. Deprived of two years of seniority, Gaddis and Starr would have enjoyed lesser health, life, and unemployment insurance benefits, lower wages, less eligibility for promotion and transfer, and greater vulnerability to layoffs than persons hired after they were unlawfully refused employment. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 30; Brief for Respondent 17. Even if Gaddis and Starr had continued to litigate the question of their retroactive seniority after accepting Ford’s offer, they still would have spent many years at Ford “subordinate to persons who, but for the illegal discrimination, would have been[,] in respect to entitlement to [competitive seniority] benefits[,] [their] inferiors.” Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 768.
The Court claims that its new rule “powerfully motivates employers to put Title VII claimants to work, thus ending ongoing discrimination as promptly as possible.” Ante, at 230. In fact, the discrimination is not ended, because a discrimination victim who accepts a “cheap offer” will be obliged to work at a seniority disadvantage, and therefore will suffer ongoing effects from the employer’s discriminatory act. The Court also alleges that its rule promotes “cooperation and voluntary compliance” with Title VII by giving both employers and claimants incentives to make and accept “unconditional” job offers. Ante, at 228-229. If the Court’s rule furthers this end, however, it does so only by weakening the bargaining position of a claimant vis-a-vis the employer. Discrimination victims will be forced to accept otherwise unacceptable offers, because they will know that rejection of those offers truncates their backpay recovery. A rule that shields discriminating employers from liability for their past discrimination and coerces bona fide Title VII claimants to accept incomplete job offers is fundamentally incompatible with the purposes of Title VII.
Second: The Court’s rule unjustifiably limits a district court’s discretion to make individual discrimination victims *252whole through awards of backpay. The Court suggests that, “absent special circumstances,” a district court abuses its discretion per se if it fails to terminate an employer’s backpay liability at the point where that employer has extended an unconditional job offer to a discrimination claimant. Yet “[i]n Albemarle Paper the Court read Title VII as creating a presumption in favor of backpay.” Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 786 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis added).10 Franks supplied “emphatic confirmation that federal courts are empowered to fashion such relief as the particular circumstances of a case may require to effect restitution, making whole insofar as possible the victims of. . . discrimination in hiring.” Id., at 764 (opinion of the Court) (emphasis added).
The Court recognizes that its new rule interferes with district court discretion to make complete backpay awards in individual cases. Thus, the Court expressly preserves the principle of appellate deference to the “sound discretion” of the trial court in “exceptional circumstances.” Ante, at 238-239, n. 27. Yet, curiously, the Court offers no explanation why the facts of this very case fail to satisfy its own “exceptional circumstances” test.11 Given the Court’s conces*253sion that district courts must retain their discretion to make bona fide Title VII claimants whole in some cases, I see no advantage in prescribing a blanket rule that displaces that discretion in other cases where complete relief is equally-justified.
Third: I am disturbed by the Court’s efforts to justify its rule by relying on situations not presented by this case. For example, the Court partially rests its rule on an “unemployed or underemployed claimant’s statutory obligation to minimize damages” by accepting an unconditional job offer without seniority. Ante, at 234. Because Gaddis and Starr were fully employed when Ford finally offered them jobs, however, neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals exempted unemployed or underemployed victims of discrimination from accepting offers like Ford’s.12 Similarly, the Court analyzes the hypothetical case of a Title VII claimant who “has had the good fortune to find a more attractive job than the defendant’s.” Ibid. But, as the Court later recognizes, there is no assurance that the present case fits this category either. After speculating at length about how Gaddis and Starr may have valued the relative worth of their Ford and General Motors jobs, see ante, at 234r-236, the Court finally acknowledges that on this paper record, “[w]e cannot infer” how much Gaddis and Starr “valued their GM jobs . . . solely from their rejection of Ford’s offer.” Ante, at 235, n. 24.
*254Equally unconvincing is the Court’s repeated invocation of, and preoccupation with, “the rights of ‘innocent third parties,’ ” ante, at 239, and the “disruption of the existing seniority system[s],” ante, at 229, that would result from adoption of the Court of Appeals’ “rule.” The Court nowhere demonstrates how petitioner's labor relations would have suffered had it extended offers of retroactive seniority to Gaddis and Starr. The details of Ford’s collective-bargaining agreement were not litigated in either the District Court or the Court of Appeals. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 30-31. Thus, those courts never passed on petitioner’s obligation to offer retroactive seniority to Gaddis and Starr if such an offer would have disrupted its labor relations or existing seniority systems.13 Nor did the Court of Appeals decide, as a general matter, whether or not offers of retroactive seniority to discrimination claimants adversely affect the rights of incumbent employees.14 The Court cannot justify reversal in the *255case at hand by vague reference to classes of claimants and third parties who are not before the Court. To the extent that it seeks to do so, its intricate argument is both irrelevant and advisory.
Fourth and finally: I am struck by the contrast between the Court’s concern for parties who are not here and its studied indifference to the real-life concerns of the parties whose interests are directly affected. When the Court finally confronts the choice that actually faced Gaddis and Starr, ante, at 236-239, it blithely suggests that “[a]fter all, they had the option of accepting Ford’s unconditional offer and retaining the right to seek full compensation at trial” in the form of retroactive seniority. Ante, at 237. Yet the Court earlier acknowledges that “[d]elays in litigation unfortunately are now commonplace, forcing the victims of discrimination to suffer years of underemployment or unemployment before they can obtain a court order awarding them the jobs unlawfully denied them.” Ante, at 228.
“If the choice presented to Gaddis and Starr was difficult,” the Court continues, “it was only because it required them to assess their likelihood of prevailing at trial.” Ante, at 238. Without consulting the record, the Court then states:
“Gaddis and Starr presumably rejected Ford’s offer because they thought their jobs at GM were worth more to them than full compensation (Ford’s offer plus a court award) discounted by the risks of litigation. . . . Had they known they were going to win [their lawsuit], of course, they would have rejected the Ford job only if they valued the GM jobs more than they valued the combination of Ford’s job plus the value of court-ordered *256compensation ^discounted by the risks of litigation.” Ante, at 237, n. 26 (emphasis in original).
This is a comfortable rationale stated from the sidelines. Unfortunately, the abstract and technical concerns that govern the Court’s calculations bear little resemblance to those that actually motivated Judy Gaddis and Rebecca Starr. When asked on cross-examination why she had turned down Ford’s 1973 offer, Gaddis testified: “I had seniority [at General Motors] and I knew that I wasn’t in danger of any layoff, where if I had accepted the job at Ford I might have worked a week or two weeks and been laid off because I would have been low seniority” App. 47 (emphasis added). Similarly, Starr testified on cross-examination: “I had seniority at General Motors. I had about fifteen people working under me. / could go to work at Ford and work a week and I knew that they could lay me off.” 4 Tr. 365-366 (emphasis added).
To a person living in the real world, the value of job security today far outstrips the value of full court-ordered compensation many years in the future. The Court’s elaborate speculation about the concerns that “presumably” motivated Gaddis and Starr nowhere recognizes what a Ford job without seniority actually meant to Gaddis and Starr — a job from which they could be laid off at any moment. Unlike the Court, Gaddis and Starr recognized that if they traded their jobs with seniority for jobs without seniority, they could quickly become unemployed again, long before they had the chance to vindicate their rights at trial.
To people like Gaddis and Starr, the knowledge that they might someday establish their Title VII claims on the merits provides little solace for their immediate and pressing personal needs. Starr’s trial testimony reveals just how much job security meant to her:
“It was just a couple of days after I had [started working] there [at a temporary job] and this is, I was just wanting that job so bad because you can’t, a woman, *257when you’ve got three children, I needed the money, and I was wanting the job so bad. I worked so hard. I’ll never forget one day when [the unit supervisor] came to me. I’ll never forget that, and he said, I had just been there a few days, I’ll have to let you go. . . . It broke my heart because I knew I had worked so hard.” Id., at 356.15
I agree with the Court that “the victims of job discrimination want jobs, not lawsuits.” Ante, at 230. See also, ante, at 221 (“The claimant needs work that will feed, a family and restore self-respect. A job is needed — now”). When Ford made its 1973 offers to Gaddis and Starr, however, they had jobs, in which they had accumulated seniority despite Ford’s discrimination. I therefore cannot accept the Court’s conclusion that these women should have traded those jobs for uncertain employment in which back seniority could be won only by lawsuit. Nor can I justify penalizing Gaddis and Starr because they “discounted” the ultimate likelihood of obtaining court-ordered retroactive seniority at a different rate than the Court does today.
After hearing all the witnesses and appraising all the evidence, the District Court exercised its equitable discretion to shape complete backpay relief for Gaddis and Starr. In light of all the circumstances, the District Court refused to penalize Gaddis and Starr for declining Ford’s 1973 job offer. Applying the correct standard of review over Title VII reme*258dies, the Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court had exercised its remedial discretion properly. Sitting at this remove, I cannot say that Gaddis and Starr acted unreasonably. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals and thereby, for these two victims of discrimination, fulfill, and not defeat, the promise of Title VII.

 In passing the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, 86 Stat. 103, Congress specifically rejected several legislative efforts to limit the judicial power to award backpay. See Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 420 (1975). The Section-by-Section Analysis accompanying the Conference Committee Report reaffirmed the “make whole” purpose of § 706(g), Title VII’s backpay provision:
“The provisions of this subsection are intended to give the courts wide discretion exercising their equitable powers to fashion the most complete relief possible. In dealing with the present section 706(g) the courts have stressed that the scope of relief under that section of the Act is intended to make the victims of unlawful discrimination whole, and that the attainment of this objective . . . requires that persons aggrieved by the consequences and effects of the unlawful employment practice be, so far as possible, restored to a position where they would have been were it not for the unlawful discrimination.” 118 Cong. Rec. 7168 (1972), quoted in Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S., at 421.

 The District Court found, for example, that the job application of Zettie Smith, who sought employment at Ford about a month before Gaddis and Starr, and who was the first woman to apply for a warehouse job there, “was never seriously considered because she is a woman.” App. to Pet. for Cert. A-157 — A-158.

 At trial, Gaddis was asked:
“Q. Did [the clerk to the warehouse manager] say that the job was being offered to you, or did he discuss simply with you, in the form of an interview, the possibility of hiring you into some job?
“A. It was so vague that I couldn’t pinpoint anything down. They never did say what type of work it would be, whether it would be [parts] *246picking or whether it would be in sheet metal or whether it would be putting up stock or whether it would be on a day shift or night shift, whether it was a permanent or temporary job. At the time, I had a good seniority with General Motors and I had a secure job, and so on those grounds, I refused it.” App. 43.
Similarly, Starr testified on cross-examination:
“I remember [the clerk to the warehouse manager] wasn’t specific on the job about what it would be. I did have, at General Motors I had fifteen, I don’t know if it was fourteen or fifteen people under me. I had seniority, and I also, this is the truth about [it,] I was scared. Whenever I had worked at Ford before, I had been badgered and I don’t know, I was just, I wanted to look into the job. Yet, I had a fear to go back. I didn’t know what I would be facing.” Id., at 54.

 The trial testimony of Ford’s warehouse operations manager illuminates petitioner’s motives:
“Q. Whose decision was it to call Ms. Gaddis and Ms. Starr?
“A. It was my decision.
“Q. Why?
“A. Well, mainly because we had a suit, EEOC suit filed against us, and we wanted to give one of them an opportunity to go to work for us, and we only had one, maybe two openings at that time.
“Q. Mr. Ely, you indicated in your testimony that you offered a job to one of the women, either Ms. Gaddis or Ms. Starr, in July, 1973. Is that correct?
“A. Yes, that’s correct.
“Q. You also stated that you offered such job because of the EEOC charge which had been filed against Ford Motor Company. Is that correct?
“A. That’s correct.” Id., at 17-18.

 The District Court applied two equitable principles to shape relief in this case. It first concluded that an award of all backpay accruing after August 1971 would make Gaddis and Starr whole. The District Court therefore reconstructed a probable employment history at Ford for each woman, calculating what each would have received but for petitioner’s unlawful discrimination. Second, the court obliged Gaddis and Starr to take all reasonable steps to mitigate damages. Accordingly, it subtracted from the backpay awards any amounts Gaddis and Starr actually earned or reasonably could have earned after August 1971. App. to Pet. for Cert. A-170.

 “[T]he district court reached an eminently reasonable result. It did not permit Ford to cut off the back pay period by making Gaddis and Starr an incomplete and unacceptable offer, and it denied Gaddis and Starr a double recovery by deducting their General Motors wages from their back pay awards.” 645 F. 2d, at 193.

 “[I]f Gaddis and Starr rejected Ford’s offer and stayed at General Motors, they would forego their rights to further back pay benefits. On the other hand, if they accepted the job offered by Ford, which they had not held for the previous two years because of Ford’s discriminatory hiring policy, they would lose their seniority rights at General Motors.” Id., at 192.

 The Court’s explanation for its misreading of the Court of Appeals’ decision is that the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia has interpreted that decision as stating a somewhat different proposition. See ante, at 227, n. 10. But if one District Court in the Fourth Circuit has misconstrued the Fourth Circuit’s opinion, surely that is a matter properly to be corrected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. This Court is not entitled to transform a narrow Court of Appeals ruling into a broad one, just so that it may reverse and install a broad new rule of its own choosing.

 Gaddis, for example, sought employment in South Carolina “at various parts places, independent part places, car dealers, such as Chrysler-Plymouth, the Ford place which was Lewis Ford at that time, all the car dealers, . . . some of the hosiery mills, . . . [and] Radiator Specialty Company,” 3 Tr. 362, before obtaining her job at General Motors.

 The Court cites language from Albemarle suggesting that a district court’s discretion is not limitless. See ante, at 226-227. But the Court conspicuously omits Albemarle’s clear statement that if Congress intended to limit the equitable discretion of district courts in any way, it did so only by leaving ‘“little room for the exercise of discretion not to order reimbursement.’” See Albemarle Payer Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S., at 417, quoting Mitchell v. DeMario Jewelry, Inc., 361 U. S. 288, 296 (1960) (emphasis added).

 The Court suggests, for example, that if a hypothetical Title VII “claimant has been forced to move a great distance to find a replacement job, a rejection of the employer’s offer might reflect the costs of relocation more than a judgment that the replacement job was superior, all things considered, to the defendant’s job.” Ante, at 238, n. 27. For Gaddis and Starr, however, the loss of their accumulated seniority at their replace*253ment jobs certainly reflected “costs of relocation” at least as substantial as high moving expenses.
I expect that federal courts will find no meaningful distinction between a worker’s refusal to accept a job offer because he believes that acceptance would force him to incur costs, and a similar refusal based on the worker’s judgment that changing jobs would prove costly. In either case, for purposes of awarding Title VII relief, the reasonableness of the worker’s refusal should be left to the trial court’s discretion.

 The purpose of § 706(g)’s “mitigation of damages” requirement is to encourage claimants to work while their Title VII claims are being adjudicated. The Court cannot deny that Gaddis and Starr fully mitigated damages by seeking and obtaining other employment while litigating their claims against Ford.

 The Court of Appeals did not foreclose the possibility that Ford could have terminated its backpay liability to Gaddis and Starr by offering them employment plus an award of provisional seniority, defeasible in the event that they lost their continuing lawsuit for backpay. Nor did the Court of Appeals deny that offering a job without seniority might terminate Ford’s backpay liability, should any provision of Ford’s collective-bargaining agreement preclude it from making offers of retroactive seniority. Had petitioner pointed to such a collective-bargaining agreement provision, or proved that its incumbent employees actually had objected to offers of retroactive seniority to Title VII claimants, the Court of Appeals would have considered those factors in determining whether the District Court abused its discretion in shaping Gaddis’ and Starr’s relief.

 In any event, the Court’s claim that offers of retroactive seniority would injure the rights of incumbent employees is vastly overstated. If an employer sued by a Title VII claimant could toll the accrual of backpay liability by making a unilateral offer that included some form of retroactive seniority, he still would have every incentive to make such an offer as soon as possible after the discriminatory act. The amount of retroactive seniority offered would necessarily be small, and the seniority rights of relatively few incumbent employees would be affected.
Under the Court’s approach, in contrast, employers will no longer have any incentive to offer retroactive seniority. Any awards of retroactive se*255niority to bona fide Title VII claimants will thus be court-ordered, and will be entered only after “the lengthy delays that too often attend Title VII litigation.” Ante, at 221. By delaying awards of retroactive seniority until final judgment in a significant number of cases, the Court’s approach ensures that the seniority rights of comparatively greater numbers of incumbent employees will be affected adversely.

 Without embarrassment, the Court cites Rebecca Starr’s testimony to support its argument that the' Court of Appeals’ “rule,” and not its own new rule, is indifferent to the real-life concerns of victims of sex discrimination. See ante, at 230, n. 12. Under the Court of Appeals’ “rule,” however, Rebecca Starr was awarded full backpay as compensation for Ford’s sex discrimination. Under this Court’s rule, a large portion of Starr’s compensation will simply be cut off. By claiming that the Court of Appeals was somehow more indifferent to Starr’s real-life concerns, the Court only confirms how far removed from the-real world it is.