Employment Discrimination

Similar to the 2005 survey period, during the 2006 survey period, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals continued its trend of issuing fewer and fewer published decisions in the area of employment discrimination. The court issued only six published decisions all year involving Title VII and only published nine opinions in the area of employment discrimination overall. With respect to unpublished opinions, however, the court continued to be extremely active, issuing 103 unpublished Title VII opinions and 148 unpublished employment discrimination opinions overall. This is further evidence of the fact that despite the proliferation of employment discrimination cases before the court, there continue to be fewer and fewer unsettled questions of law in this area. Clearly the most significant opinion of the year was the Supreme Court\u27s retaliation decision in Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway v. White, which greatly expanded Title VII\u27s anti-retaliation provision by holding that section 704(a) of the Acts is not limited to adverse employment actions related to a plaintiff\u27s employment or that occur at the workplace