JOHNNY WILLIAMS, ON BEHALF OF HIMSELF AND OTHER PERSONS SIMILARLY SITUATED, PLAINTIFFS-APPELLANTS,
v.
DEKALB COUNTY, A POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA, ET AL., DEFENDANTS-APPELLEES

5th Cir. | 1978-10-10
No. 76-2998
Before TUTTLE and CLARK, Circuit Judges, and ED ENFIELD, District Judge.
582 F.2d 2 Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (1978) Positive Treatment
Cited by 43 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

A claim under § 1981 requires a showing of purposeful discrimination, equating it to a Fourteenth Amendment claim under Washington v. Davis, rather than a Title VII claim.


Facts & Procedural History

The trial court decided the case before Washington v. Davis, without determining purposeful discrimination. The plaintiff presented statistical data a…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
' PER CURIAM:

' PER CURIAM:

Upon motion for rehearing, a majority of the court agrees with Judge Clark’s special concurring opinion. The opinion is accordingly modified to hold that under the teaching of Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976), the named plaintiff and the class must make a showing of purposeful discrimination before casting the burden on the defendant to rebut the charge; that a claim under § 1981 is, for this purpose, to be equated with a claim under the Fourteenth Amendment, dealt with by the court in Washington, rather than under Title VII of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

That part of the panel opinion headed “Conclusion” [577 F. 2d at 256] is therefore deleted from the opinion as are the statements holding that a prima facie case is made by statistics alone. The following “Conclusion” is substituted for the corresponding part of the original opinion:

CONCLUSION

The trial court decided the case before Washington v. Davis, supra, and thus did not find it necessary to determine whether there was purposeful discrimination. The case must be remanded to the trial court to determine whether the plaintiff’s evidence — including the statistical data — established a prima facie case of discriminatory purpose which, if unrebutted, would establish liability. If the court finds that such a prima facie case has been made out, we adhere to our other determinations contained in the original opinion1 and the trial court will then resolve the questions we have set forth there.

The judgment is REVERSED and the case is REMANDED for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Judge Tuttle would adhere to the original opinion of the panel.

No member of this panel nor judge in regular active service on the court having requested that the court be polled on rehearing en banc (Rule 35 Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure; Local Fifth Circuit Rule 12), the Petition for Rehearing En Banc is DENIED.

. None of the determinations in that opinion have been challenged by the petition for rehearing except that dealing with the standard of proof under § 1981.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By (23 total)

Previewing 3 of 23 citing cases — full citator treatment, depth of discussion, and citing context are member features.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw