Landmark Employment-Discrimination Cases

The rules described elsewhere on this site did not arrive fully formed. They were built, case by case, out of real disputes that reached the courts and the public. The following summaries are offered strictly as matters of public record and for educational purposes. They are not legal advice, and nothing here should be read as a characterization of any individual party beyond what appeared in widely reported public filings and settlements.

Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971)

The foundation of modern disparate-impact law. The Supreme Court held that an employer’s use of general aptitude tests and diploma requirements, which screened out Black applicants at higher rates and were not shown to predict job performance, violated Title VII even without proof of intent. Griggs established that practices “fair in form but discriminatory in operation” are unlawful unless justified by business necessity.

Shoney's (early 1990s)

A restaurant chain settled one of the era’s largest race-discrimination class actions, reportedly for tens of millions of dollars, after allegations that Black employees were limited to kitchen roles and kept out of customer-facing positions. The case became a widely cited example of how promotion and job-assignment patterns, not just hiring, can embody discrimination.

Texaco (1996)

A race-discrimination class action against the oil company settled for a then-record sum after the emergence of recordings of executives discussing minority employees. The settlement funded back pay, salary increases, and an outside equality task force, and it became a case study in how workplace culture and hard evidence can drive systemic reform.

Retail “Look” Discrimination: The Abercrombie & Fitch Case (2003–2005)

In June 2003, a coalition of civil-rights organizations filed a nationwide class action alleging that the teen-apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch discriminated against Latino, Asian American, and African American applicants and employees in hiring and job assignment in order to maintain a particular “A&F look.” The complaint described qualified people of color being denied sales-floor positions or steered into stockroom and overnight roles. The matter drew extensive national coverage from outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. It resolved through consent decrees under which the company agreed to overhaul its recruiting, hiring, and diversity practices, submit to outside monitoring, and pay a settlement fund reported at roughly $40 million to class members in 2005. The case is frequently taught as a clear illustration that “brand image” cannot justify race or national-origin discrimination — the theme explored on our retail hiring page.

EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. (2015)

A separate and later Supreme Court case, unrelated to the class action above, addressed religious accommodation. The Court held that an employer may violate Title VII by refusing to hire an applicant — there, a young Muslim woman who wore a headscarf — to avoid accommodating a religious practice, even if the applicant never explicitly requested an accommodation. The decision strengthened protections for religious observance in hiring.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes (2011)

As discussed in our class actions guide, the Supreme Court declined to certify a nationwide class of roughly 1.5 million women alleging sex discrimination in pay and promotion, finding they had not shown a common company-wide policy binding their claims together. The ruling did not decide whether discrimination occurred; it reshaped how large systemic cases must be structured.

Why These Cases Still Matter

Together these matters trace the arc of American workplace civil rights: from establishing that neutral practices can discriminate, to confronting culture and job-assignment bias, to testing the limits of group litigation. They also show the role of public attention — press coverage, agency findings, and court records — in turning private grievances into lasting reform. To see how that public record is created and why it matters, read employment discrimination in the news.