Beyond Implicit Bias: Litigating Race and Gender Employment Discrimination Using Data from the Workplace Experiences Survey†
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Beyond Implicit Bias: Litigating Race and Gender Employment Discrimination Using Data from the Workplace Experiences Survey† JOAN C. WILLIAMS†, RACHEL M. KORN† & SKY MIHAYLO† This Article joins other voices1 in challenging what I will call the “implicit bias consensus” in employment discrimination law, first crystallized in the work of Susan Sturm2 and Linda Hamilton Krieger.3 The implicit bias consensus has two basic components. The first is that most employment discrimination today is what Sturm christened “second generation employment discrimination” caused by implicit bias that is uncontrollable and unconscious, subtle and ambiguous.4 The second component of the consensus is that Title VII is ill-suited to address second generation discrimination.5 † This Article is dedicated to the memory of Professor Katherine W. V. Phillips of Columbia Business School (1973–2020), whose wise and humane spirit and influential contributions to social psychology will be sorely missed. Many thanks for those busy people who were generous with their time in reading prior drafts of this Article: Stephanie Bornstein, Cynthia Thomas Calvert, Kate Mueting, and Mike Selmi. Thanks, too, for expert research assistance to Heather Lanyi, Rachel Maas, Natasha Martin, Katie Utehs Panzer, Hilary Burke Chan, and Mikayla Boginsky. Our appreciation also goes to Brianna Watson for compiling graphs. † Distinguished Professor of Law, Hastings Foundation Chair, Founding Director, Center for WorkLife Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law. † Director of Research, Center for WorkLife Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law. † Senior Policy and Research Analyst, Center for WorkLife Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law. 1. Samuel R. Bagenstos, Implicit Bias’s Failure, 39 BERKELEY J. EMP. & LAB. L. 37 (2018); Ann C. McGinley, ¡Viva La Evolución!: Recognizing Unconscious Motive in Title VII, 9 CORNELL J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 415 (2000); Michael Selmi, The Paradox of Implicit Bias and a Plea for a New Narrative, 50 ARIZ. ST. L.J. 193 (2018) [hereinafter Selmi, The Paradox of Implicit Bias]; Michael Selmi, Proving Intentional Discrimination: The Reality of Supreme Court Rhetoric, 86 GEO. L.J. 279 (1997) [hereinafter Selmi, Proving Intentional Discrimination]; Ralph Richard Banks & Richard Thompson Ford, (How) Does Unconscious Bias Matter?: Law, Politics, and Racial Inequality, 58 EMORY L.J. 1053 (2009) (worrying that the rhetoric of unconscious bias will subvert concrete goals in favor or an amorphous goal of eradicating unconscious bias). 2. Susan Sturm, Second Generation Employment Discrimination: A Structural Approach, 101 COLUM. L. REV. 458, 459 (2001). 3. Linda Hamilton Krieger, The Content of Our Categories: A Cognitive Bias Approach to Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunity, 47 STAN. L. REV. 1161, 1164 (1995). 4. Sturm, supra note 2, at 468. 5. Stephanie Bornstein, Unifying Antidiscrimination Law Through Stereotype Theory, 20 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 919, 965 (2016); Sonia Goltz, Roger Reinsch & Joel Tuoriniemi, University Women’s Experiences in Bringing Second Generation Sex Discrimination Claims: Further Support for Adoption of a Structural [337] 338 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 72:337 This Article challenges the implicit bias consensus based on six different datasets from the Workplace Experiences Survey (WES), a simple ten-minute climate survey that provides a fine- grained description of how racial and gender bias play out in everyday workplace interactions. WES data and Williams’s other research offer plaintiffs’ lawyers a simple way to talk about racial and gender bias as falling into five basic patterns. WES data also helps them respond to the common defense argument that studies performed in social psychology labs do not describe what happens at work: the conjunction of lab studies and WES data is more powerful than either type of evidence alone, because lab studies provide objective evidence that the five basic patterns exist in the world, while WES data provide attitudinal evidence that these five patterns exist in today’s workplaces. The Article explores the implications of the WES and the five-patterns model for Title VII, contesting some basic tenets of the implicit bias consensus, notably its description of bias as unconscious and uncontrollable, and the contention that Title VII is ill-suited to address contemporary forms of discrimination. The Article ends by providing a step-by-step guide to how to use bias evidence in litigation, highlighting evidence that will be useful to help plaintiffs’ lawyers establish that a reasonable jury could find bias, particularly in light of the relaxed causation standard articulated in Bostock v. Clayton County.6 Approach, 18 TEX. J. WOMEN & L. 145, 153 (2009); Stephen M. Rich, One Law of Race?, 100 IOWA L. REV. 201, 231 (2014). 6. Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020). November 2020] BEYOND IMPLICIT BIAS 339 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 341 I. THE IMPLICIT BIAS CONSENSUS GIVES A DESCRIPTION OF BIAS ILL-SUITED TO THE WORKPLACE CONTEXT ........................................ 345 A. IN THE EMPLOYMENT CONTEXT, THE IAT FOCUSES ATTENTION ON THE WRONG PART OF THE COGNITIVE PROCESS .................... 346 B. THE PICTURE OF BIAS AS UNCONSCIOUS AND UNCONTROLLABLE IS MISLEADING ............................................. 347 C. RELYING ONLY ON FIELD STUDIES IS NOT THE ANSWER .............. 352 II. HOW BIAS PLAYS OUT IN EVERYDAY WORKPLACE INTERACTIONS: THE WES DATA .................................................................................. 353 A. PROVE-IT-AGAIN BIAS ................................................................... 354 B. TIGHTROPE BIAS ............................................................................ 365 C. MATERNAL WALL BIAS ................................................................. 383 D. TUG OF WAR BIAS ......................................................................... 388 E. RACIAL STEREOTYPES .................................................................... 395 F. CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 400 III. THE IMPLICIT BIAS CONSENSUS GIVES AN INACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF TITLE VII LAW ............................................................................... 400 A. THE FIRST GENERATION DISCRIMINATION/SECOND GENERATION PERIODIZATION IS INACCURATE, AS IS THE CLAIM THAT TITLE VII ADDRESSES ONLY FIRST GENERATION DISCRIMINATION .......................................................................... 401 B. ONCE THE FOCUS SHIFTS FROM AUTOMATIC ASSOCIATIONS TO THE FIVE PATTERNS OF WORKPLACE BIAS, TITLE VII DOCTRINE READILY ACCOMMODATES EVIDENCE OF MODERN FORMS OF GENDER BIAS .............................................. 406 C. ONCE THE FOCUS SHIFTS FROM AUTOMATIC ASSOCIATIONS TO THE FIVE PATTERNS OF WORKPLACE BIAS, TITLE VII DOCTRINE READILY ACCOMMODATES EVIDENCE OF MODERN FORMS OF RACIAL BIAS ............................................... 413 D. COURTS SHOULD CONSIDER THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE FIVE- PATTERNS MODEL FOR THE SAME-ACTOR AND PERSONAL ANIMOSITY DEFENSES ................................................................. 416 E. CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 423 IV. USING WES DATA IN LITIGATION ........................................................... 424 A. THE IMPLICATIONS OF WIDESPREAD DISSEMINATION OF THE BIAS PATTERNS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT AND EXPERT TESTIMONY .................................................................................. 425 B. TO AVOID DILUTION, WES DATA SUGGEST THAT LAWYERS SHOULD CONSIDER USING WHITE MEN AS COMPARATORS, 340 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 72:337 PARTICULARLY IN CASES INVOLVING “INTERSECTIONAL PLAINTIFFS” ................................................................................. 444 C. STEP BY STEP USE OF FIVE-PATTERNS EVIDENCE IN LITIGATION .................................................................................. 447 CONCLUSION: MERITOCRACY GONE AWRY ................................................... 449 APPENDIX A .................................................................................................... 451 A. PROVE-IT-AGAIN ........................................................................... 451 B. TIGHTROPE ..................................................................................... 453 1. Gender & Race ....................................................................... 453 2. Race ........................................................................................ 454 3. Gender .................................................................................... 454 C. MATERNAL WALL .......................................................................... 455 1. Gender .................................................................................... 455 2. Race ........................................................................................ 455 D. TUG OF WAR .................................................................................. 456 1. Gender .................................................................................... 456 2. Race ........................................................................................ 456 E. RACIAL STEREOTYPES (NOT OTHERWISE MENTIONED) ................. 456 1. For Black Individuals ............................................................