Court Opinion

ID: 9439094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:21:10.684391+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:09.101077
License: Public Domain

TATEL, Circuit Judge,
with whom HARRY T. EDWARDS, Chief Judge, WALD, ROGERS, and GARLAND, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting:
A jury found that the American Dental Association (“ADA”) intentionally discriminated against Carole Kolstad on the basis of sex when it denied her a promotion in favor *971of a male candidate. Under the Civil Rights Act of 1991, 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(l) (1994), victims of intentional employment discrimination who demonstrate that the employer acted “with malice or with reckless indifference to [their] federally protected rights” may recover punitive damages. This court now holds that Congress meant to require something more serious than intentional discrimination — some undefined quantum of egregiousness — before a jury may consider punitive damages. Because this amorphous requirement nullifies the plain language of section 1981a(b)(l)’s reckless indifference standard, and because it conflicts with Supreme Court decisions in Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30, 103 S.Ct. 1625, 75 L.Ed.2d 632 (1983), and Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U.S. 604, 113 S.Ct. 1701, 123 L.Ed.2d 338 (1993), I respectfully dissent.
I
Asserting that Congress “did not intend to make punitive damages automatically available in the standard case of intentional discrimination under Title VII,” Maj. Op. at 961, the court declares that the evidence supporting punitive damages “must exceed what is needed to show intentional discrimination,” id. If Congress had wanted to require something more serious than intentional discrimination, however, it would have limited section 1981a(b)(l) to “malice,” or it would have written the statute to require “malice or egregiousness.” But section 1981a(b)(l) never mentions egregiousness. Instead, it allows the jury to consider punitive damages if the employer acts not only with malice, but also with “reckless indifference to ... federally protected rights.” Because this court’s duty is to “give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of [the] statute,” Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, -, 117 S.Ct. 1154, 1166, 137 L.Ed.2d 281 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted), we may not ignore the reckless indifference standard, but must interpret it as written by Congress. See National Credit Union Admin, v. First Nat’l Bank & Trust Co., - U.S. -, -, 118 S.Ct. 927, 938-40, 140 L.Ed.2d 1 (1998).
According to its plain language, section 1981a(b)(l)’s “reckless indifference” threshold for punitive damages focuses on the employer’s awareness of “federally protected rights.” In Smith v. Wade, from which Congress drew section 1981a(b)(1)’s language, see H.R. Rep. No. 102-40, pt. 1, at 74 (1991) (citing Smith), Justice Brennan’s opinion for the Court referred to this inquiry as a measure of the defendant’s “subjective consciousness of risk ... of unlawfulness.” Smith, 461 U.S. at 38 n. 6, 103 S.Ct. at 1631 n. 6 (emphases altered). As this court said in a different context, “ ‘the wrongdoer must consciously be aware of his wrongdoing, i.e., the actor must not only intend, to do the act found to be wrongful, but also must know that his conduct is wrongful.’ ” Saba v. Compagnie Nationale Air France, 78 F.3d 664, 668 (D.C.Cir.1996) (emphasis omitted) (quoting In re Korean Air Lines Disaster of Sept. 1, 198S, 704 F.Supp. 1135, 1136 (D.D.C. 1988)).
Although the details of the recklessness standard remain open to debate, see Maj. Op. at 954 (citing Saba, 78 F.3d at 668-69, and United States v. Krizek, 111 F.3d 934, 941 (D.C.Cir.1997)); cf. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 836-37,114 S.Ct. 1970,1978-79,128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994) (discussing objective and subjective tests for reckless disregard), its basic contours are well settled; the language of section 1981a(b)(l) is not the blank slate that the court seeks to make of it. Whether relying on the employer’s mental state (Saba) or inferring recklessness from the entire record (Krizek), a jury can award punitive damages under section 1981a(b)(l) if the employer either knew of Title VIFs prohibitions and acted regardless or disregarded a substantial risk of violating the statute. Cf. W. Page Keeton et al., PROSSER and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 34, at 213 (5th ed.1984) (noting that the “usual meaning” of “reckless” is that “the actor has intentionally done an act of an unreasonable character in disregard of a known or obvious risk that was so great as to make it highly probable that harm would follow”).
The court and concurring opinion reject the statute’s reckless indifference standard because they view it, mistakenly in my view, *972as “subsumed” by section 1981a(a)’s liability determination. When the jury determines liability in a Title VII disparate treatment ease, it considers only whether the employer made the challenged employment decision “because of’ the plaintiffs race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2. The employer’s awareness of its legal obligations plays no role. In this case, for example, the verdict in Kolstad’s favor, a verdict unanimously affirmed by the panel and not now before this court, rested solely on the jury’s conclusion that ADA denied Kolstad the promotion because of her sex. ADA’s liability for punitive damages, by comparison, turns on its awareness of its legal obligations: When it denied Kolstad the promotion because of sex, did it intend to violate Title VII? Did it know of its legal obligations yet recklessly disregard them? Or can reckless indifference to federally protected rights be inferred from the entire record?
Criticizing this reading of the Act, the court says that “any test that makes the difference between compensatory and punitive exposure depend on the employer’s awareness of Title VII’s legal mandates is likely to produce only a negligible set of eases in which compensatory but not punitive damages are available.” Maj. Op. at 968. Quite apart from its entirely speculative nature, this statement disregards the fact that section 1981a(b)(l), by focusing specifically on whether the employer acted with “reckless indifference ... to federally protected rights,” in fact makes the difference between compensatory and punitive damages “depend on the employer’s awareness of Title VII’s legal mandates.”
In addition to appearing nowhere in section 1981a, the court’s new egregiousness requirement conflicts with Smith v. Wade’s holding that “a jury may be permitted to assess punitive damages in an action under [42 U.S.C.] § 1983 when the defendant’s conduct is shown to be motivated by evil motive or intent, or when it involves reckless or callous indifference to the federally protected rights of others,” Smith, 461 U.S. at 56, 103 S.Ct. at 1640. Rejecting the notion that punitive damages under section 1983 require anything as egregious as “actual malicious intent — ‘ill will, spite, or intent to injure,”’ Smith, 461 U.S. at 37, 103 S.Ct. at 1630, the Court noted that the majority common law rule recognizes that “punitive damages in tort cases may be awarded not only for actual intent to injure or evil motive, but also for recklessness, serious indifference to or disregard for the rights of others, or even gross negligence,” id. at 48, 103 S.Ct. at 1636. Although citing the Restatement (Second) of Torts’ view that punitive damages “punish [the defendant] for his outrageous conduct,” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 908(1) (1979), quoted in Smith, 461 U.S. at 54, 103 S.Ct. at 1639, Smith actually draws its standard for punitive damages from the Restatement’s subsequent explanation that conduct can be outrageous “because of the defendant’s evil motive or his reckless indifference to the rights of others,” id. § 908(2) (emphasis added), quoted in Smith, 461 U.S. at 4&-47, 103 S.Ct. at 1635-36.
Smith also rejected the proposition, central to my colleagues’ interpretation of section 1981a, that “the threshold for punitive damages should always be higher than that for liability in the first instance,” Smith, 461 U.S. at 38, 103 S.Ct. at 1631; see also id. at 51-54, 103 S.Ct. at 1637-39. According to Smith, the reckless indifference threshold for punitive damages “applies even when the underlying standard of liability for compensatory damages is one of recklessness.” Id. at 56,103 S.Ct. at 1640.
The Supreme Court reached the same result under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”), notwithstanding that statute’s “two-tiered scheme of liability,” Maj. Op. at 962. Interpreting the term “willful” as used in the ADEA, the Court held that an employer should be assessed liquidated damages, the statute’s equivalent of punitive damages, if it “knew or showed reckless disregard for the matter of whether its conduct was prohibited by the ADEA.” Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U.S. 111, 126, 105 S.Ct. 613, 624, 83 L.Ed.2d 523 (1985) (quoting Air Line Pilots Ass’n, Int’l v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 713 F.2d 940, 956 (2d Cir.1983)). Lower courts, concerned that the reckless disregard standard “would defeat the two-tiered system of liabili*973ty intended by Congress, because every employer that engages in informal age discrimination knows or recklessly disregards the illegality of its conduct,” Hazen Paper, 507 U.S. at 615-16, 113 S.Ct. at 1709, added just the kind of heightened culpability requirement that my colleagues now read into section 1981a, see id. at 615, 113 S.Ct. at 1708-09 (citing, e.g., Lockhart v. Westinghouse Credit Corp., 879 F.2d 43, 57-58 (3d Cir.1989), which allowed liquidated damages only if employer’s conduct was “outrageous”). Flatly rejecting these decisions, Hazen Par per holds that “[t]he ADEA does not provide for liquidated damages ‘where consistent with the principle of a two-tiered liability scheme.’ It provides for liquidated damages where the violation was ‘willful.’ ... Once a ‘willful’ violation has been shown, the employee need not additionally demonstrate that the employer’s conduct was outrageous.” Id. at 616-17, 113 S.Ct. at 1709-10.
Read in light of Smith and Hazen Paper, section 1981a’s plain language thus leaves no doubt that juries may consider punitive damages on the basis of evidence showing nothing more than “reckless indifference to ... federally protected rights.” Moreover, even though the liability determination (Did the employer intentionally take account of sex?) differs from the reckless indifference inquiry (When the employer intentionally discriminated, was it aware of its legal obligations?), proof of unlawful intentional discrimination can also demonstrate reckless indifference to federally protected rights. Considering that Congress passed the Civil Rights Act over three decades ago, that the statute and its prohibition against discrimination are well known to employers, that many companies have instituted Title VII compliance programs, and that an industry of equal employment opportunity consultants and attorneys is readily available to employers in need of assistance, a jury could reasonably conclude that an employer nevertheless refusing to hire or promote a woman because of sex is worthy of punishment.
This does not mean, as the court fears, that juries will automatically award punitive damages in every Title VII disparate treatment ease. Punitive damages “are never awarded as of right, no matter how egregious the defendant’s conduct.” Smith, 461 U.S. at 52, 103 S.Ct. at 1638. If a jury believes that an employer has acted maliciously or with reckless indifference to a plaintiffs federally protected rights, it then decides whether to punish the defendant, a determination the law leaves to the jury’s “discretionary moral judgment.” Id. Although a jury exercising its moral discretion might conclude that an employer recklessly indifferent to federally protected rights deserves punishment, a jury could also reach the opposite conclusion, that because of extenuating circumstances — e.g., the employer had no history of discrimination, showed remorse, or had already taken steps to rectify the injury — the employer should not have to pay punitive damages.
Because liability and punitive damages require distinct inquiries, moreover, employers found to have intentionally discriminated in employment in violation of federal law may introduce evidence to demonstrate that they did everything they could to comply with the law and were therefore not recklessly indifferent to their legal obligations. In Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, for example, the Supreme Court held that employers who intentionally violate the ADEA may nevertheless avoid liquidated damages by demonstrating that they attempted “reasonably and in good faith” to comply with the law. Thurston, 469 U.S. at 129, 105 S.Ct. at 625. Although finding that TWA’s mandatory retirement policy violated the Act, the Court denied plaintiffs liquidated damages because, by seeking legal advice and consulting with the union, TWA demonstrated that it had not acted in “ ‘reckless disregard’ of the requirements of the ADEA.” Id. at 130, 105 S.Ct. at 626. Cf., e.g,, Harris v. L & L Wings, Inc., 132 F.3d 978, 984 (4th Cir.1997) (noting “that the institution of a written sexual harassment policy goes a long way towards dispelling any claim about the employer’s ‘reckless’ or ‘malicious’ state of mind”).
For similar reasons, employers found to have intentionally discriminated in violation of Title VII may be able to persuade a jury that they had acted without reckless indifference; employers may even be able to convince a judge to remove the question of *974punitive damages from jury consideration altogether. For example, evidence that an employer erroneously used religion, sex, or national origin as a “bona fide occupational qualification” for employment, see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(e), or overreached in a good-faith effort to remedy the effects of past discrimination, could demonstrate that the employer acted without reckless indifference to its legal obligations. Punitive damages might be equally inappropriate where liability rests on a novel legal theory. See, e.g., Turic v. Holland Hospitality, Inc., 85 F.3d 1211, 1216 (6th Cir.1996) (denying punitive damages although holding employer liable for dismissing female employee who had contemplated an abortion, an entirely novel theory of liability); see also Hemandez-Tirado v. Artau, 874 F.2d 866, 870 (1st Cir.1989) (although intentionally violating the First Amendment in a politically motivated employment decision, defendant was only “negligent [as] to the existence of a federally protected right”).
Evidence sufficient to prove liability may also fall short of establishing an employer’s reckless indifference to its legal obligations where the employer’s liability arises from an attenuated agency relationship with an em-' ployee found to have committed an intentional act of discrimination. Because employers are responsible for injuries caused by employees acting within the scope of employment, juries considering liability in traditional Title VII cases attribute employees’ intentional use of race or sex to the employer. See Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 75, 106 S.Ct. 2399, 2409-10, 91 L.Ed.2d 49 (1986) (Marshall, J., concurring in judgment) (in the typical Title VII case “when a supervisor discriminatorily fires or refuses to promote a black employee, that act is, without more, considered the act of the employer”); see also Restatement (Second) of Agenoy § 219 (1958) (“A master is subject to liability for the torts of his servants committed while acting in the scope of their employment.”). Attribution of employee state of mind differs when the jury turns to the question of punitive damages. Because punitive damages are intended not to compensate the victim, but rather to punish employers for the discriminatory acts of employees, cf. Smith, 461 U.S. at 54, 103 S.Ct. at 1639 (in the punitive damages inquiry, “[t]he focus is on the character of the tortfeasor’s conduct — whether it is of the sort that calls for deterrence and punishment over and above that provided by compensatory awards”), the jury focuses on the employer’s, not the employee’s, awareness of its legal obligations. Obviously, if the person discriminating is the same as the employer — in a sole proprietorship, for example — there is no difference between the employer’s awareness of its legal obligations and the employee’s. But where a gap exists in the agency relationship between the agent and the entity being held hable, ie., where the employee making the hiring or firing decision does not constitute the employer’s entire decision-making apparatus, the punitive damages inquiry requires the jury to examine the employer’s awareness of the law. An employer could thus argue that even though it had been found liable for the discriminatory acts of an employee and ordered to pay compensatory damages to the victim, it should not have to pay punitive damages because it had undertaken good-faith efforts to comply with Title VII — for example, by hiring staff and managers sensitive to Title VII responsibilities, by requiring effective EEO training, or by developing and using objective hiring and promotion standards — thereby demonstrating that it never acted in reckless disregard of federally protected rights.
This interpretation of section 1981a sets up exactly the incentives Congress intended. While Congress expected victims of intentional discrimination to be compensated for their losses, it also wanted to motivate employers to detect and deter Title VII violations. See H.R.Rep. No. 102-40, pt. 1, at 69-70 (recounting testimony encouraging employers to design and implement effective structures to combat discrimination). Giving punitive damages protection to employers who make good-faith efforts to prevent discrimination in the workplace accomplishes just this purpose. Employers making no such efforts will not only have to compensate victims, but may be punished for them reckless indifference to federal law.
*975Applying section 1981a(b)(1)’s reckless indifference standard to the facts of this case, I believe the district court should have allowed the jury to consider punitive damages. Found to have intentionally discriminated against Kolstad, ADA never argued that it made good-faith efforts to comply with the law; the ease involves no novel issues of Title VII liability; and the decision to deny Kol-stad the promotion was made not by a low-level employee, but by ADA’s executive director. Under these circumstances, the jury should have been allowed to consider whether in denying Kolstad a promotion because of her sex ADA acted with reckless indifference to her federally protected rights.
II
The court spends most of its opinion struggling to avoid the plain language of section 1981a and the holdings of Smith and Hazen Paper. It begins by detecting an egregiousness standard in section 1981a’s legislative history. Contentious and partisan, see Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 262, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 1495, 128 L.Ed.2d 229 (1994), the Act’s legislative history actually manifests contradictory signals regarding congressional intent about punitive damages. As the court acknowledges, see Maj. Op. at 963, the House Report it relies on for a “heightened” standard cites two irreconcilable section 1981 cases—Beauford v. Sisters of Mercy-Province of Detroit, Inc., 816 F.2d 1104, 1109 (6th Cir.1987), limiting punitive damages to “egregious” cases, and Rowlett v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 832 F.2d 194, 205-06 (1st Cir.1987), holding that plaintiffs need prove nothing beyond intentional discrimination for juries to consider punitive damages. The court’s egregiousness standard comports with Beauford. My interpretation of section 1981a comports with Rowlett. Given the clarity of section 1981a’s text, we should follow the statute rather than selective bits of its confused legislative history.
Next, appearing to concede that Congress drew the language of section 1981a(b)(l) from Smith, see Maj. Op. at 964, the court then reads Smith to require proof of egregiousness for punitive damages, see id. at 965. Even if recklessly violating the Eighth Amendment is somehow more egregious than intentionally discriminating in employment on the basis of sex or race in violation of federal law, see id. at 964, it does not follow that because liability in Smith required “base, inhumane and barbaric” action, Smith, 461 U.S. at 32, 103 S.Ct. at 1628, the standard for punitive damages must always include “some form of egregiousness,” Maj. Op. at 964. Like the rest of the court’s opinion, its reliance on Smith’s underlying standard for liability rests on its failure to acknowledge that the punitive damages inquiry depends not on the seriousness of the behavior giving rise to liability, but on the defendant’s awareness of its legal obligations. Both “base, inhumane and barbaric” acts (Eighth Amendment) and intentional discrimination in employment (Title VII) can be committed with “reckless indifference to ... federally protected rights.”
The court relies on Memphis Community School District v. Stachura, 477 U.S. 299,106 S.Ct. 2537, 91 L.Ed.2d 249 (1986), but nothing in that case casts doubt on Smith’s holding that proof of reckless indifference suffices for punitive damages. Noting in dicta that punitive damages are available on a showing of “requisite intent,” id. at 306 n. 9, 106 S.Ct. at 2542 n. 9, Stachura drew the “maliciously, or wantonly, or oppressively done” standard not from Smith, but from the jury instruction under review in that case, see id. Moreover,' while our sister circuits have split over the meaning of Smith, compare Maj. Op. at 966 (collecting eases reading Smith to require egregiousness), with, e.g., Savarese v. Agriss, 883 F.2d 1194, 1203-04 (3d Cir.1989) (rejecting heightened culpability requirement under Smith); Melear v. Spears, 862 F.2d 1177, 1187 (5th Cir.1989) (applying Smith’s reckless indifference standard without proof of egregiousness), we have consistently read Smith’s reckless indifference standard without adding an egregiousness requirement, see, e.g., Samaritan Inns, Inc. v. District of Columbia, 114 F.3d 1227, 1239 (D.C.Cir.1997) (applying Smith to the Fair Housing Act); Barbour v. Merrill, 48 F.3d 1270, 1277 (D.C.Cir.1995) (applying Smith to section 1981).
*976My colleagues make two unpersuasive attempts to distinguish Hazen Papers clear rejection of their “two-tiers” rationale. Asserting first that the ADEA’s “willful” standard has no bearing on the “malice” or “reckless indifference” required under section 1981a(b)(l), Maj. Op. at 961, the court ignores Thurston's holding that “willful” conduct includes “reckless disregard,” a term courts use interchangeably with “reckless indifference,” see, e.g., Williams v. Borough of West Chester, 891 F.2d 458, 464 n. 10 (3d Cir.1989).
Second, the court points out that unlike the double damages authorized by the liquidated damages provision of the ADEA, the ratio between compensatory and punitive damages under Title VII is potentially unlimited. Maj. Op. at 966-967. This observation is interesting, but Congress chose to deal with the risk of disproportionate punitive damages awards under Title VII by preserving judges’ traditional oversight of jury discretion. See H.R. Rep. No. 102-40, pt. 1, at 72 (“Judges serve as an additional check: they can and do reduce awards which are disproportionate to the defendant’s discriminatory conduct or the plaintiffs resulting loss.”). I have no doubt that district courts — and if necessary, circuit courts — have all the authority they need to correct disproportionate awards, particularly an “infinite[ly]” disproportionate award, Maj. Op. at 967, should one ever occur. Equally significant, when enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1991, Congress carefully limited punitive damages in other ways. It capped total damages at between $50,000 and $300,000 depending on the employer’s size, 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(3), and barred punitive damages altogether in disparate impact cases, see id. § 1981a(a)(l), in mixed motive eáses, see id. § 2000e-5(g)(2), and against governmental defendants, see id. § 1981a(b)(l). Because Congress itself carefully cabined punitive damages, it is particularly inappropriate for this court to add a limitation not found in the language of the statute. “Courts may not create their own limitations on legislation, no matter how alluring the policy arguments for doing so....” Brogan v. United States, — U.S. -, ---, 118 S.Ct. 805, 811-12, 139 L.Ed.2d 830 (1998).
Ill
Not only does the court’s egregiousness standard conflict with the language of section 1981a and with Smith and Hazen Paper, but my colleagues offer no clear definition of the term, shifting from one interpretation to another and leaving district courts little guidance.

Egregiousness as a Measure of the Seriousness of the Discrimination

Initially, the court equates egregiousness with the seriousness of the underlying discrimination. See Maj. Op. at 960, 961. But unlike reckless indifference, or even malice, which also focuses on an employer’s state of mind, see, e.g., Dellums v. Powell, 660 F.2d 802, 808 (D.C.Cir.1981) (noting that malice is a subjective inquiry), the jury considers the seriousness of the underlying intentional discrimination in setting compensatory damages; the more egregious the harm, the greater the compensation awarded. Of course, the egregiousness of the violation can relate to the punitive damages inquiry in the sense that egregious discrimination can be probative of malice or reckless indifference. To consider egregiousness in awarding punitive damages, however, the jury must make an inference not required at the liability stage: that the egregiousness of the discrimination suggests malice or reckless indifference to federally protected rights.
The court’s effort to define egregiousness as a measure of the severity of discrimination suffers from several other defects. At one point, for example, the court defines egregiousness as “a pervasive pattern of discriminatory acts.” Maj. Op. at 965. Not only does the court provide no support for this new standard, but exposing only those employers to punitive damages who commit multiple acts of discrimination essentially allows employers to engage in a single act of invidious discrimination without fear of punitive damages.
Offering still another definition, again without citation, the court says that egregiousness might be demonstrated by an em*977ployer’s “genuine spite and malevolence.” Id. Not content to read the reckless indifference standard out of the statute, the court here tinkers with section 1981a’s other punitive damages test, suggesting that it requires not just “malice,” but some kind of “genuine” malice, whatever that means.
Under any of these iterations of egregiousness-as-a-measure-of-seriousness, it is entirely unclear how district judges will determine when intentional discrimination is sufficiently non-egregious to take the issue from the jury. Never offering a clear answer, the court leaves it to district courts to decide for themselves whether an employer’s conduct is worthy of punishment, thus allowing judges to usurp the jury’s exercise of moral judgment.

Egregiousness as a Measure of the Plaintiff's Evidence

Applying its egregiousness standard to the facts of this case, see id. at 969-970, the court shifts from using egregiousness as a reflection of the seriousness of the discrimination to a measure of the strength of Kolstad’s proof. According to the court, the “only evidence that pointed toward gender bias was Kolstad’s testimony that Wheat told sexually offensive jokes at staff meetings and on occasion used derogatory terms to refer to prominent professional women.” Id. at 970. “Wheat’s statements standing alone," the court says, “do not form an adequate basis for an award of punitive damages.” Id.
Amounting to little more than a requirement of direct rather than circumstantial evidence of discrimination as a prerequisite for punitive damages, the court’s approach conflicts with Hazen Paper, 507 U.S. at 615, 113 S.Ct. at 1708-09 (rejecting requirement of Neufeld v. Searle Laboratories, 884 F.2d 335, 340 (8th Cir.1989), that underlying evidence of liability be direct before allowing liquidated damages). It also conflicts with this circuit’s ease law holding that at least with respect to proof of liability, circumstantial evidence can be as probative as direct evidence. See, e.g., Crawford-El v. Britton, 93 F.3d 813, 818 (D.C.Cir.1996) (en banc) (Williams, J.) (“[T]he distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence has no direct correlation with the strength of [a] plaintiffs case.”), rev’d on other grounds, — U.S. -, 118 S.Ct. 1584, — L.Ed.2d - (1998); cf. Thomas v. National Football League Players Ass’n, 131 F.3d 198, 204 (D.C.Cir.1997) (“‘[D]irect’ evidence [in the Title VII mixed motive context] may be circumstantial in nature, so long as it establishes that discriminatory motive played a substantial role in the employment decision.”). I see no reason why the same rule should not apply to proof of punitive damages, particularly since the presence or absence of direct evidence of intent is not necessarily an accurate measure of blameworthiness. Why, for example, is an employer who leaves behind clear evidence of its intentional, discriminatory refusal to promote one woman — “these are jobs for men” — more worthy of punishment than an employer who subtly, but equally intentionally, refuses to promote an entire class of women? Under the court’s direct evidence rule, employers who effectively cover up evidence of their discriminatory intent will escape punitive damages no matter how egregious their discrimination. Congress, acting to strengthen Title VII in the Civil Rights Act of 1991, could not have intended such a nonsensical result.

Egregiousness as a Requirement of More than Mere Pretext

Acknowledging that we are considering the question of whether rejection of a proffered nondiscriminatory rationale by itself can support a finding of intentional discrimination in a different en banc case, see Maj. Op. at 969 (citing Aka v. Washington Hosp. Ctr., 116 F.3d 876 (D.C.Cir.), judgment vacated pending reh’g en banc, 124 F.3d 1302, 1302 (D.C.Cir.1997)), the court says that in this case such evidence “falls far short of supplying grounds for a punitive award,” id. at 969. Although punitive damage awards in pretext-only cases may be “improbable,” id. at 969 n. 9, the court’s premise is entirely unsupported by the record. Properly reviewed, the evidence in this case demonstrates that the jury’s verdict could have rested on much more than rejection of the employer’s proffered nondiscriminatory justification. This *978court’s job is not to weigh the evidence, as my colleagues seem to have done, but to view the evidence “in the light most favorable” to Kolstad, giving her “the benefit of every fair and reasonable inference,” Anderson v. Group Hospitalization, Inc., 820 F.2d 465, 471 (D.C.Cir.1987). Viewed this way, the jury could have based its finding of liability— again, a finding of intentional discrimination affirmed unanimously by the panel — on much more than “rejection, as mgre pretext, of ADA’s proffered rationales,” Maj. Op. at 969.
To begin with, the record contains evidence from which the jury could have concluded that Kolstad was the more qualified of the two candidates. A lawyer, Kolstad worked for six years as the principal legislative draftsperson for the Department of Defense, preparing testimony for congressional hearings and representing the Department’s interests on Capitol Hill. Employed for four years at ADA when the position opened, Kolstad served as Director of Federal Agency Relations, handling the entire range of regulatory issues of concern to ADA. She consistently received “distinguished” performance evaluations from the Director of ADA’s Washington office. By contrast, Tom Spangler, the male candidate who got the promotion, began working for ADA only a year and a half before the position opened, technically failed to meet the minimum posted requirements for the position, and received negative comments about his writing ability, a skill ADA highlighted at trial as central to the position.
Although the court describes what it perceives to have been a benign, routine selection process, the record contains evidence from which the jury could have concluded that because ADA preselected Spangler for the position, the selection process was a sham. Before ADA posted the opening, Spangler met frequently with the incumbent (Jack O’Donnell), ADA did not post the position promptly after O’Donnell decided to retire, and a secretary familiar with the process testified that she thought Spangler was being groomed for the job. Leonard Wheat, head of ADA’s Washington office and the person most- closely supervising the competing candidates, refused to meet with Kolstad to discuss O’Donnell’s .position, despite frequently meeting with Spangler. Although Executive Director Dr. William Allen formally appointed O’Donnell’s successor, Allen— based in ADA’s Chicago headquarters — relied heavily upon Wheat’s recommendation of Spangler. Assigning all legislative work to Spangler, Wheat repeatedly refused Kol-stad’s requests to work on legislative matters, despite their relevance to the regulatory issues she covered and her experience in the field. Formally interviewing Spangler but not Kolstad, Allen failed to review Kolstad’s numerous, detailed, positive performance evaluations.
The record also contains evidence, equally minimized by the court, from which the jury could have concluded that ADA attempted to cover up Spangler’s preselection. Compiling a description of O’Donnell’s position a few days before posting the job, Allen edited the description to fit Spangler’s qualifications. O’Donnell’s position description originally stated that its “most important responsibility” was to “[mjaintain liaison with federal agencies, bureaus and Administration,” corresponding directly to Kolstad’s work at ADA. Tailoring the job description to Span-gler’s specialty, Allen added “Congress” before “federal agencies,” and also added whole phrases from the position description questionnaire used to hire Spangler. As Kolstad argued, the jury could have believed that ADA, in an effort to bolster its claim that Spangler was more qualified, altered documents to justify his promotion.
Kolstad proffered a 1984 consent decree settling a class action suit brought against ADA by female employees under Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. Resnick v. American Dental Ass’n, No. 79-C-3785 (N.D. Ill.). Denying wrongdoing and expiring prior to the decision not to promote Kolstad, the decree showed that ADA had specific knowledge of the impropriety of preselection, as well as of the connection between preselection and employment discrimination. The decree stated that “pre-selection of a favored candidate is contrary to ADA’s firm policy of giving full and fair consideration to each application. Violations of this policy will *979have an adverse impact on an employee’s annual merit review and will be cause for discipline.” The district court refused to admit the decree to prove liability, but the panel stated in a portion of the opinion not before us that the district court could admit the decree in a trial on punitive damages. See Kolstad v. American Dental Ass’n, 108 F.3d 1431, 1439 (D.C.Cir.1997).
From the evidence, the jury also could have found that ADA changed its explanation for rejecting Kolstad. After telling her that she was passed over because she lacked experience with health care reform and was too valuable in her position, ADA abandoned that justification at trial, instead attacking Kol-stad’s general qualifications and writing ability. My colleagues ignore this testimony, but the jury was entitled to consider it as evidence of ADA’s falsehood, and therefore of its discrimination. See St. Mary’s Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 511, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 2749, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993) (“The factfinder’s disbelief of the reasons put forward by the defendant (particularly if disbelief is accompanied by a suspicion of mendacity) may, together with the elements of the prima facie case, suffice to show intentional discrimination.”) (emphasis added).
The record also contains evidence from which the jury could have concluded that Wheat, Kolstad’s supervisor whose advice Allen relied on in deciding to promote Spangler instead of Kolstad, told sexually offensive jokes at the office and referred to professional women as “bitches” and “battleaxes.” Although this testimony may have been “contested” (the panel’s word) or even “hotly contested,” (the court’s words), nothing in the record indicates that the testimony lacked sufficient credibility for the jury to believe it.
In addition to weighing the evidence instead of viewing it from a reasonable juror’s perspective, my colleagues isolate each element of Kolstad’s ease, diminishing the cumulative significance of her proof. Of course, preselection “by itself,” Maj. Op. at 969, violates no law, and “sexist remarks ... are ‘not always conclusive of sex discrimination,’ ” id at 970 (quoting Neuren v. Adduci, Mastriani, Meeks & Schill, 43 F.3d 1507, 1513 (D.C.Cir.1995)). As in even the most compelling eases of discrimination, any aspect of Kolstad’s case taken in isolation might seem minimal. Considering her evidence together, as this court must, see, e.g., Downes v. Volkswagen of America, Inc., 41 F.3d 1132, 1140 (7th Cir.1994), and reviewing it “in the light most favorable” to Kolstad, giving her “the benefit of every fair and reasonable inference,” Anderson, 820 F.2d at 471, the jury could have concluded that this record contains substantial circumstantial, perhaps even direct, evidence of invidious, intentional, unlawful discrimination that society no longer tolerates. Therefore, even if punitive damages are “improbable” in a ease where the verdict rests on no more than the jury’s rejection of the employer’s nondiscriminatory rationale, this is not that case.
IV
Because this court has found that the record contains sufficient evidence to support the jury’s finding of intentional discrimination on the basis of sex, and because ADA never attempted to justify its use of sex in the promotion decision, never disavowed the actions of its agents (Wheat and Allen), never offered evidence that it had taken any specific steps to comply with Title VII, and never otherwise demonstrated that in intentionally discriminating against Kolstad, it had not acted with reckless indifference to her federally protected rights, I would remand for a trial on punitive damages.