US Employment Litigation Round-Up For May 2014

Keywords: EEOC, Federal Rules of Evidence, pre-employment credit checks, Costco workers, NLRB

A Review of Key Cases and New Laws Affecting Employers

Sixth Circuit Excludes EEOC's Unreliable Disparate Impact Expert

Decision: The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in EEOC v. Kaplan Higher Education Corp. reinforced the Federal Rules of Evidence requirement that each part of a proposed expert's methodology be reliable in order for the expert's testimony to be admissible.

The EEOC's lawsuit against Kaplan alleged that Kaplan's use of pre-employment credit checks caused it to reject more African-American applicants than white applicants, creating a disparate impact in violation of Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act. To support its claim, the EEOC offered expert testimony in the form of statistical analysis that purportedly demonstrated the disparate impact. Because information about the race of the applicants was not available, the EEOC's expert