McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green

McDonnell Douglas v. Green
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 28, 1973 Decided May 14, 1973
Full case name	McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green
Citations	411 U.S. 792 (more) 93 S. Ct. 1817; 36 L. Ed. 2d 668
Case history
Prior	Green v. McDonnell-Douglas Corp., 318 F. Supp. 846 (E.D. Mo. 1970); 463 F.2d 337 (8th Cir. 1970); cert. granted, 409 U.S. 1036 (1972).
Subsequent	On remand, Green v. McDonnell Douglas Corp., 390 F. Supp. 501 (E.D. Mo. 1975); affirmed, 528 F.2d 1102 (8th Cir. 1976).
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William O. Douglas · William J. Brennan Jr. Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell Jr. · William Rehnquist
Case opinion
Majority	Powell, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), is a US employment law case by the United States Supreme Court regarding the burdens and nature of proof in proving a Title VII case and the order in which plaintiffs and defendants present proof. It was the seminal case in the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a United States federal law that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. After the Supreme Court ruling, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Pub. L. 102-166) amended several sections of Title VII.^[1]

Title VII prohibits employment discrimination "because of" certain reasons. While "because of" may be understood in the conversational sense, the McDonnell Douglas case was the first landmark case to define this phrase.