Employment Discrimination

In what no doubt will prove to be the calm before the storm, the number of cases decided in the area of employment discrimination during the 1990 survey period decreased significantly, both in the United States Supreme Court and in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The decline in the number of Supreme Court pronouncements is not surprising, since the succession of landmark cases decided in the previous two years was truly remarkable, and such a pace realistically could not have continued. It also appears as if the Eleventh Circuit held back, waiting to see whether Congress would pass the much-publicized Civil Rights Act reform legislation, and if so, what impact the final version of such legislation would have on the recent Supreme Court decisions. One exception to the decline in the number of cases involved the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

In various decisions, the Eleventh Circuit addressed the impact of the Supreme Court's decision in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union.