458 U.S. 219, 228–39 (1982)
In June and July 1971, Judy Gaddis, Rebecca Starr, and Zettie Smith applied at a Ford Motor Co. parts warehouse located in Charlotte, North Carolina, for jobs as picker-packers.1 At the time, no woman had ever worked in that capacity at the Ford warehouse.2 All three women were qualified for the positions.3 Gaddis and Starr recently had been laid off from equivalent jobs at a nearby General Motors warehouse.4 Smith had comparable prior experience. Smith applied before any of the openings were filled, and Gaddis and Starr applied while at least two positions remained available.5 Ford filled the three vacant positions with men.6 Gaddis filed a charge with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that Ford had discriminated against her because of her sex.7
In January 1973, GM recalled Gaddis and Starr to their former positions at its warehouse.8 The following July, while they were still working at GM, a single vacancy opened up at Ford.9 Ford offered the job to Gaddis, without seniority retroactive to her 1971 application.10 Ford's offer did not require Gaddis to abandon or compromise her Title VII claim against Ford.11 Gaddis did not accept the job, in part because she did not want to be the only woman working at the warehouse, and in part because she did not want to lose the seniority she had earned at GM.12 Ford then made the same unconditional offer to Starr, who declined for the same reasons.13 Gaddis and Starr continued to work at the GM warehouse, but in 1974 the warehouse was closed and they were laid off.14 They then unsuccessfully sought new employment until September 1975, when they entered a Government training program for the unemployed.15 Smith applied again for work at Ford in 1973, but was never hired.16 She worked elsewhere, though at lower wages than she would have earned at Ford, during much of the time between 1971 and the District Court's decision in 1977.17
In July 1975, the EEOC sued Ford in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.18 The suit alleged that Ford had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by refusing to hire women at the Charlotte warehouse.19 The Commission sought injunctive relief and backpay for the victims.20 After trial, the District Court found that Ford had discriminated against the three women on the basis of their sex.21 The court awarded backpay equal to the difference between the amount the women would have earned had they been hired in August 1971, and the amounts actually earned or reasonably earnable by them between that date and the date of the court's order.22 The District Court rejected Ford's contention that Gaddis and Starr were not entitled to backpay accruing after the dates on which they declined Ford's offer of employment.23
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the District Court's finding of unlawful discrimination.24 The court also affirmed the award to Gaddis and Starr of backpay that had accrued after July 1973, when the women rejected Ford's unconditional job offer.25 The court suggested that, had Ford promised retroactive seniority with its job offer, the offer would have cut off Ford's backpay liability.26 The court concluded, however, that without the promise of retroactive seniority, Ford's 1973 offer was incomplete and unacceptable.27 Ford then petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari, contending that its unconditional job offer to Gaddis and Starr should have cut off the further accrual of backpay liability.28 The Supreme Court granted the writ.29
Whether an employer charged with discrimination in hiring can toll the continuing accrual of backpay liability under Title VII simply by unconditionally offering the claimant the job previously denied, or whether the employer also must offer seniority retroactive to the date of the alleged discrimination?30
Section 706(g) of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(g), makes backpay a discretionary equitable remedy whose primary objectives are ending discrimination through voluntary compliance and making victims whole.31 An employer's unconditional offer of the job previously denied tolls further accrual of backpay liability absent special circumstances.32 Retroactive seniority is not required for the offer to be effective.33
Yes. The statutory duty to minimize damages requires a Title VII claimant to accept an unconditional offer of substantially equivalent employment.34 The offers provided the picker-packer positions at the Charlotte warehouse without any requirement that the women abandon their claims.35 Gaddis and Starr had already secured equivalent employment at the GM warehouse by that date.36 Their rejection of Ford's offers on grounds of lost seniority and being the sole women at the warehouse established that they no longer suffered ongoing economic injury from the 1971 discrimination.37 Requiring retroactive seniority in every case would impose additional fringe-benefit costs.38 It would also risk labor unrest.39 Such a requirement could potentially violate collective-bargaining agreements.40 These burdens would discourage employers from extending curative offers and undermine the goal of prompt voluntary compliance.41
The application of the rule leaves claimants fully able to recover pre-offer backpay and any proven post-offer losses if they ultimately prevail.42 It does so without forcing employers to grant unadjudicated seniority that could disadvantage innocent incumbent employees.43
An employer's unconditional job offer tolls the continuing accrual of backpay liability under Title VII even without an accompanying offer of retroactive seniority.44
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Blackmun dissented on the ground that the majority had mischaracterized the Court of Appeals decision as announcing an inflexible rule rather than applying the established abuse-of-discretion standard from Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody.45 He maintained that the District Court's award of full backpay to Gaddis and Starr constituted a proper exercise of equitable discretion.46 The July 1973 offers were made only after the EEOC charge was filed.47
The offers did not restore the seniority and job security the women would have enjoyed absent the 1971 discrimination.48 In his view, the majority's new rule improperly supplants district-court discretion and fails to make the victims whole.49 This is particularly true where the women faced an immediate risk of layoff if they surrendered their GM seniority for uncertain positions at Ford.50
Justice Marshall dissented separately.51 He contended that the majority had transformed the narrow Court of Appeals ruling into a broad new rule simply to reverse it.52 He emphasized that the loss of accumulated seniority at the GM warehouse represented a concrete and substantial cost.53
That cost rendered Ford's unconditional offers unacceptable.54 The majority's approach paid insufficient attention to the real-world priority discrimination victims place on immediate job security over the uncertain prospect of future court-ordered compensation.55 Marshall further observed that the majority's reliance on hypothetical situations not presented by the record rendered its analysis advisory.56 He also noted that reliance on the interests of parties not before the Court detached the analysis from the equities of the actual case.57