Expect More “Gender Stereotyping” Claims

It has long been the law of the land that discrimination on the basis of an employee's sex is unlawful. And in 1989, in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that making employment decisions based upon gender-based stereotypes is a form of unlawful sex discrimination.

Ann Hopkins claimed that she had been denied a partnership with Price Waterhouse because she did not conform to the accounting firm's view of how women should behave: she was aggressive; she used profanity; she was not charming; and she did not walk, talk, or dress in a feminine manner. A plurality of the Court noted that "we are beyond the day when an employer [can] evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotype associated with their group, for in forbidding employers to discriminate against individuals because of their sex, Congress intended to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and woman resulting from sex stereotypes."