Does a complaint of race discrimination have to establish a prima facie case under the McDonnell Douglas standard? "No" answered the Sixth Circuit in reversing a district court ruling in Keys v Humana, Inc, No 11-5472 (July 2, 2012).
Kathryn Keys filed a class-action race discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, Humana. A federal district court judge, Hon. Charles R. Simpson, for the Western District of Kentucky dismissed Keys' complaint "finding that Keys failed to plead a prima facie case of race discrimination under the burden-shifting framework of McDonnell Douglas. The Sixth Circuit reversed in an opinion written by Judge Jane Stranch explaining as follows:
- the Supreme Court unanimously held in Swierkiewicz v. Sorema, 534 US 506, 510 (2002) that "the prima facie case under McDonnell Douglas is an evidentiary standard, not a pleading requirement
- As the Supreme Court reasoned, "it is not appropriate to require a plaintiff to plead facts establishing a prima facie case because the McDonnell Douglas framework does not apply in every employment discrimination case."
- the Supreme Court has ruled that the ordinary rules of notice pleading apply to employment discrimination cases and a complaint need only give "fair notice" of the basis of the plaintiff's claims
This appears to be a case where the district court got tripped up and concluded that the Supreme Court's decisions in Bell Atlantic Corp v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 US 662 (2009) imposed additional pleading requirements on an employment discrimination claim including allegations supporting a prima facie case. Iqbal and Twombly do apply, as the Sixth Circuit explained, but only to the extent that they require articulation of a plausible claim, noting that "plausibility occupies that wide space between possibility and probability."
