Opinion: 491 U.S. 164 (1989)
HOLDING: Section 1981, a federal statute that prohibits racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of private contracts, as then in effect, did not provide a cause of action for racial harassment. (In the Civil Rights Act of 1991, Congress later amended § 1981 to provide a cause of action for racial harassment, thus superseding this holding.)The statute did provide a cause of action for failure to promote based on race when a new contract is involved, but a plaintiff did not need to prove she was better qualified than the white employee who received the promotion; the statue required only purposeful discrimination.
Brenda Patterson was not promoted and was later fired from her job as a teller and file coordinator at McLean Credit Union. She filed suit in District Court alleging that her employer, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981, had harassed her, failed to promote her to an intermediate accounting clerk position, and then discharged her, all because of her race. Section 1981 provides that, regardless of race, all persons within the United States shall have the same right to “make and enforce contracts.”
The District Court refused to submit her claim for racial harassment to the jury, holding that such a claim is not actionable under § 1981. It did submit her discrimination and failure to promote claims, instructing the jury that to prevail on a § 1981 claim of discriminatory failure to promote, she had to show that she was better qualified than the white employee who she alleges was promoted instead of her. Ms. Patterson appealed, challenging the District Court’s refusal to submit her § 1981 claim based on racial harassment and the jury instructions for the § 1981 claim based on discriminatory failure to promote. The Fourth Circuit affirmed.
The Supreme Court refused to overrule Runyon v. McCary, 427 U.S. 160 (1976), which held that § 1981 applied to contracts between private parties. But it held that racial harassment claims relating to conditions of employment fell outside the scope of making and enforcing contracts prohibited under § 1981, then in effect. It reasoned that such conduct is actionable under the more expansive reach of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so there was no reason to interpret § 1981 to cover post-formation conduct unrelated to the enforcement of the contract. The Court affirmed the lower court’s dismissal; this decision was later superseded by statute.
The Supreme Court found error in the jury instructions given by the District Court on the failure to promote claim. The Court held that the law does not require a § 1981 plaintiff to prove that she was a better qualified applicant than the person chosen for the position. Such a showing is one way to prove purposeful discrimination, but such discrimination can also be shown in the same ways discrimination is proved under Title VII and other civil rights laws.