570 U.S. 338 (2013) (Supreme Court of the United States)
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar is a landmark Title VII decision that reshaped the causation standard for retaliation claims.
Does Title VII's anti-retaliation provision, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–3(a), require a plaintiff to prove that protected activity was the but-for cause of an adverse employment action, or is it sufficient to show that retaliation was a motivating factor in the decision?
Under Title VII, retaliation claims brought pursuant to § 704(a), 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–3(a), require proof of but-for causation: the plaintiff must show that the adverse employment action would not have occurred in the absence of the employer's retaliatory motive. The statutory mixed-motive framework codified in § 703(m), 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–2(m)—permitting liability where a protected characteristic is a motivating factor—applies only to status-based discrimination claims (race, color, religion, sex, national origin) and does not govern retaliation. See also the default tort-law principle that "because of" denotes but-for causation and Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U.S. 167 (2009).
Yes. Title VII retaliation claims under § 704(a) require but-for causation; the mixed-motive standard in § 703(m) does not apply to retaliation. The Fifth Circuit's use of the motivating-factor standard for retaliation was error. The judgment was vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings under the correct standard.
Nassar is a cornerstone Title VII case delineating two distinct causation regimes: mixed-motive for status-based discrimination (§ 703(m)) and but-for for retaliation (§ 704(a)). For litigators, it affects pleading, discovery, and summary judgment strategy; at trial, it requires jury instructions and verdict forms that ask whether retaliation was the but-for cause of the adverse action. For employers and HR professionals, Nassar underscores the importance of contemporaneous, well-documented, nonretaliatory reasons for employment decisions taken after protected activity. For law students, Nassar is essential for understanding how statutory text, structure, and default tort principles interact to produce different causation standards within the same overarching statute.