The discriminatory acts of a prior supervisor marred the work record of an employee when he later sought promotion. The employee sought to present evidence on these past discriminatory acts to support his failure to promote claim based on race. The trial judge excluded this evidence and, in doing so, committed reversible error the Sixth Circuit has ruled in Cobbins v. Tennessee Dept. of Transportation, No 07-6491 (April 2, 2009).
Gregory Cobbins, an African-American male, was a ten year employee of the Tennessee Department of Transportation and sought promotion to a supervisor position. He was unsuccessful and one of the explanations for the decision was that the successful candidate had no record of disciplinary action, while Cobbins "had several oral and written warnings in his work file." The warnings were all received between 1998 and 2002 by a former supervisor, Yocum. Cobbins claimed in a prior lawsuit that these warnings were the product of race discrimination by Yocum. The prior lawsuit was dismissed without a judgment on the merits of Cobbins' claim. In this case, he claimed that these earlier discriminatory acts by Yocum deprived him of the opportunity to compete fairly for the promotion to the supervisor position.
The "cat's paw" theory in employment discrimination litigation refers to a situation in which a biased subordinate, who lacks decisionmaking power, influences the unbiased decisionmaker to make an adverse hiring decision, thereby obscuring the subordinate's discriminatory intent. See Arendale v. City of Memphis, 519 F3d 587, 604 n.13 (6th Cir 2008)("When an adverse hiring decision is made by a supervisor who lacks impermissible bias, but that supervisor was influenced by another individual who was motivated by such bias, this Court has held that the employer may be held liable under a 'rubber-stamp' or 'cat's paw' theory of liability."). Here, Cobbins sought to show that Yocum's past discriminatory acts, which resulted in warnings in his file, influenced the decisionmaking process that resulted in Cobbins' being passed over for promotion unfairly:
Plaintiff seeks only to demonstrate that certain conduct and actions of his supervisor at that time impacted his work record and promotion chances; and such evidence is, therefore, relevant in this case.
This case represents an often-encountered scenario: the discriminatory bias of a supervisor inflicts permanent damage to an employee's career by packing his or her file with unfounded or unfair warnings.
