Muldrow v. St. Louis

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

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No. 22–193

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Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow, PETITIONER v. City of St. Louis, Missouri, et al.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit

 Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court.

 Sergeant Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow maintains that her employer, the St. Louis Police Department, transferred her from one job to another because she is a woman. She sued the City of St. Louis under Title VII, alleging that she had suffered sex discrimination with respect to the “terms [or] conditions” of her employment. 42 U. S. C. §2000e–2(a)(1). The courts below rejected the claim on the ground that the transfer did not cause Muldrow a “significant” employment disadvantage. Other courts have used similar standards in addressing Title VII suits arising from job transfers.

 Today, we disapprove that approach. Although an employee must show some harm from a forced transfer to prevail in a Title VII suit, she need not show that the injury satisfies a significance test. Title VII’s text nowhere establishes that high bar.

I

 From 2008 through 2017, Sergeant Muldrow worked as a plainclothes officer in the St. Louis Police Department’s specialized Intelligence Division. During her tenure there, she investigated public corruption and human trafficking  cases, oversaw the Gang Unit, and served as head of the Gun Crimes Unit. By virtue of her Division position, Muldrow was also deputized as a Task Force Officer with the Federal Bureau of Investigation—a status granting her, among other things, FBI credentials, an unmarked take-home vehicle, and the authority to pursue investigations outside St. Louis. In 2017, the outgoing commander of the Intelligence Division told her newly appointed successor that Muldrow was a “workhorse”—still more, that “if there was one sergeant he could count on in the Division,” it was Muldrow. 2020 WL 5505113, *1 (ED Mo., Sept. 11, 2020).

 But the new Intelligence Division commander, Captain Michael Deeba, instead asked the Department to transfer Muldrow out of the unit. Deeba wanted to replace Muldrow—whom he sometimes called “Mrs.” rather than the customary “Sergeant”—with a male police officer. See id., at *1–*2. That officer, Deeba later testified, seemed a better fit for the Division’s “very dangerous” work. Id., at *2; App. 139. The Department approved the transfer against Muldrow’s wishes. It reassigned her to a uniformed job in the Department’s Fifth District.

 While Muldrow’s rank and pay remained the same in the new position, her responsibilities, perks, and schedule did not. Instead of working with high-ranking officials on the departmental priorities lodged in the Intelligence Division, Muldrow now supervised the day-to-day activities of neighborhood patrol officers. Her new duties included approving their arrests, reviewing their reports, and handling other administrative matters; she also did some patrol work herself. Because she no longer served in the Intelligence Division, she lost her FBI status and the car that came with it. And the change of jobs made Muldrow’s workweek less regular. She had worked a traditional Monday-through-Friday week in the Intelligence Division. Now she was placed on a “rotating schedule” that often involved weekend shifts. 2020 WL 5505113, *2.

  Muldrow brought this Title VII suit to challenge the transfer. Her complaint alleged that the City, in ousting her from the Intelligence Division, had “discriminate[d] against” her based on sex “with respect to” the “terms [or] conditions” of her employment. §2000e–2(a)(1). In later deposition testimony, Muldrow set out her view of what the transfer had cost her. She had been moved out of a “premier position [in] the Police Department” into a less “prestigious” and more “administrative” uniformed role. App. 105, 114, 120. She had fewer “opportunities” to work on “important investigations,” as well as to “network” with commanding officers. Id., at 104. And she lost material benefits—her weekday work schedule and take-home car. Or as she summarized the situation: “I went from straight days, weekends off with a take-home car and more visibility and responsibility within the Department to a rotating schedule with few weekends off, assigned to . . . uniformed patrol,” with “responsibilities being limited to that of administrative work” and “supervising officers on patrol.” Id., at 120. Title VII, Muldrow asserted in her suit, prevented the City from making those changes to her employment because of her sex.

 The District Court, viewing the matter differently, granted the City summary judgment. Under Circuit precedent, the court explained, Muldrow needed to show that her transfer effected a “significant” change in working conditions producing “material employment disadvantage.” 2020 WL 5505113, *8–*9. And Muldrow, the court held, could not meet that heightened-injury standard. “[S]he experienced no change in salary or rank.” Id., at *9. Her loss of “the networking [opportunities] available in Intelligence” was immaterial because she had not provided evidence that it had harmed her “career prospects.” Id., at *8. And given her continued “supervisory role,” she had not “suffered a significant alteration to her work responsibilities.” Id., at *9. Finally, the District Court concluded that the switch to  a rotating schedule (including weekend work) and the loss of a take-home vehicle could not fill the gap. Although mentioning those changes “in her statement of facts,” Muldrow had not relied on them in “her argument against summary judgment.” Ibid., n. 20. And anyway, the court stated, they “appear to be minor alterations of employment, rather than material harms.” Ibid.

 The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed. It agreed that Muldrow had to—but could not—show that the transfer caused a “materially significant disadvantage.” 30 F. 4th 680, 688 (2022). Like the District Court, the Eighth Circuit emphasized that the transfer “did not result in a diminution to her title, salary, or benefits.” Id., at 688–689. And the Circuit, too, maintained that the change in her job responsibilities was “insufficient” to support a Title VII claim. Id., at 689. In the Fifth District, the court reasoned, Muldrow still had a “supervisory role” and participated in investigating serious crimes. Id., at 688. So the court thought Muldrow’s view of the new job—“more administrative and less prestigious”—was unsupported by record evidence and not “persuasive.” Ibid. The court did not address Muldrow’s new schedule or her loss of a car, apparently thinking those matters either forfeited or too slight to mention. Overall, the court held, Muldrow’s claim could not proceed because she had experienced “only minor changes in working conditions.” Ibid.

 We granted certiorari, 600 U. S. ___ (2023), to resolve a Circuit split over whether an employee challenging a transfer under Title VII must meet a heightened threshold of harm—be it dubbed significant, serious, or something similar.¹ We now vacate the judgment below because the text  of Title VII imposes no such requirement.

II

A

 Title VII makes it unlawful for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” §2000e–2(a)(1). Muldrow’s suit, as described above, alleges that she was transferred to a lesser position because she is a woman. That transfer, as both parties agree, implicated “terms” and “conditions” of Muldrow’s employment, changing nothing less than the what, where, and when of her police work. See Brief for Muldrow 19; Brief for City 1, 45–46. So the statutory language applicable to this case prohibits “discriminat[ing] against” an individual “with respect to” the “terms [or] conditions” of employment because of that individual’s sex.

 That language requires Muldrow to show that the transfer brought about some “disadvantageous” change in an employment term or condition. Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75, 80 (1998). The words “discriminate against,” we have explained, refer to “differences in treatment that injure” employees. Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U. S. 644, 681 (2020). Or otherwise said, the  statute targets practices that “treat[ ] a person worse” because of sex or other protected trait. Id., at 658. And in the typical transfer case, that “worse” treatment must pertain to—must be “with respect to”—employment “terms [or] conditions.” §2000e–2(a)(1). The “terms [or] conditions” phrase, we have made clear, is not used “in the narrow contractual sense”; it covers more than the “economic or tangible.” Oncale, 523 U. S., at 78; Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57, 64 (1986). Still, the phrase circumscribes the injuries that can give rise to a suit like this one. To make out a Title VII discrimination claim, a transferee must show some harm respecting an identifiable term or condition of employment.

 What the transferee does not have to show, according to the relevant text, is that the harm incurred was “significant.” 30 F. 4th, at 688. Or serious, or substantial, or any similar adjective suggesting that the disadvantage to the employee must exceed a heightened bar. See supra, at 4, and 4–5, n. 1. “Discriminate against” means treat worse, here based on sex. See, e.g., Bostock, 590 U. S., at 657–658, 681. But neither that phrase nor any other says anything about how much worse. There is nothing in the provision to distinguish, as the courts below did, between transfers causing significant disadvantages and transfers causing not-so-significant ones. And there is nothing to otherwise establish an elevated threshold of harm. To demand “significance” is to add words—and significant words, as it were—to the statute Congress enacted. It is to impose a new requirement on a Title VII claimant, so that the law as applied demands something more of her than the law as written.

 And that difference can make a real difference for complaining transferees. Many forced transfers leave workers worse off respecting employment terms or conditions. (After all, a transfer is not usually forced when it leaves the employee better off.) But now add another question— whether the harm is significant. As appellate decisions reveal, the answers can lie in the eye of the beholder—and can disregard varied kinds of disadvantage. Take just a few examples from the caselaw. An engineering technician is assigned to work at a new job site—specifically, a 14-by-22-foot wind tunnel; a court rules that the transfer does not have a “significant detrimental effect.” Boone v. Goldin, 178 F. 3d 253, 256 (CA4 1999). A shipping worker is required to take a position involving only nighttime work; a court decides that the assignment does not “constitute a significant change in employment.” Daniels v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 701 F. 3d 620, 635 (CA10 2012). And a school principal is forced into a non-school-based administrative role supervising fewer employees; a court again finds the change in job duties not “significant.” Cole v. Wake Cty. Bd. of Educ., 834 Fed. Appx. 820, 821 (CA4 2021) (per curiam). All those employees suffered some injury in employment terms or conditions (allegedly because of race or sex). Their claims were rejected solely because courts rewrote Title VII, compelling workers to make a showing that the statutory text does not require.²

 B

 The City, in defense of that added requirement, makes three main arguments—one about the text, one about our precedent, and one about policy. None justifies the use of a “significance” standard.

 The textual claim invokes the ejusdem generis canon—the idea that a general phrase following an enumeration of things should be read to encompass only things of the same basic kind. Recall the prohibition at issue here: An employer may not, based on sex, “fail or refuse to hire” or “discharge” any person or “otherwise . . . discriminate against [her] with respect to [her] compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.” §2000e–2(a)(1); see supra, at 5. Refusing to hire or discharging a person, the City notes, causes a significant disadvantage; so the subsequent “otherwise” phrase, the City claims, can apply only to things causing an equal level of harm. See Brief for City 16, 25–27. But the City fails to explain why the presence of significant disadvantage must be part of the list’s common denominator. The text itself provides a different shared trait. Each kind of prohibited discrimination occurs by way of an employment action—whether pertaining to hiring, or firing, or compensating, or (as here) altering terms or conditions through a transfer. That is a more than sufficient basis to unite the provision’s several parts and avoid ejusdem generis problems. There is no need for courts to introduce a significant-harm requirement.

 The City’s argument from precedent fares no better. It relies on Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White, 548 U. S. 53 (2006), which addressed Title VII’s separate anti-retaliation provision. Under that section, an employer may not take action against an employee for bringing or aiding a Title VII charge. See §2000e–3(a). The Court held that the provision applies only when the retaliatory action is “materially adverse,” meaning that it causes “sig nificant” harm. Id., at 68. The City thinks we should import the same standard into the anti-discrimination provision at issue. See Brief for City 18–19. But that would create a mismatch. White adopted the standard for reasons peculiar to the retaliation context. The test was meant to capture those (and only those) employer actions serious enough to “dissuade[ ] a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.” 548 U. S., at 68. If an action causes less serious harm, the Court reasoned, it will not deter Title VII enforcement; and if it will not deter Title VII enforcement, it falls outside the purposes of the ban on retaliation. See id., at 63, 68. But no such (frankly extra-textual) reasoning is applicable to the discrimination bar. Whether an action causes significant enough harm to deter any employee conduct is there beside the point. White itself noted the difference: The anti-discrimination provision, we explained, simply “seeks a workplace where individuals are not discriminated against” because of traits like race and sex. Id., at 63. The provision thus flatly “prevent[s] injury to individuals based on” status, ibid., without distinguishing between significant and less significant harms.

 Finally, the City’s policy objections cannot override Title VII’s text. In the City’s view, a significant-injury requirement is needed to prevent transferred employees from “swamp[ing] courts and employers” with insubstantial lawsuits requiring “burdensome discovery and trials.” Brief for City 45, 49 (capitalization and boldface omitted). But there is reason to doubt that the floodgates will open in the way feared. As we have explained, the anti-discrimination provision at issue requires that the employee show some injury. See supra, at 5–6. It requires that the injury asserted concern the terms or conditions of her employment. See ibid. Perhaps most notably, it requires that the employer have acted for discriminatory reasons—“because of ” sex or  race or other protected trait. §2000e–2(a)(1). And in addressing that issue, a court may consider whether a less harmful act is, in a given context, less suggestive of intentional discrimination. So courts retain multiple ways to dispose of meritless Title VII claims challenging transfer decisions. But even supposing the City’s worst predictions come true, that would be the result of the statute Congress drafted. As we noted in another Title VII decision, we will not “add words to the law” to achieve what some employers might think “a desirable result.” EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., 575 U. S. 768, 774 (2015). Had Congress wanted to limit liability for job transfers to those causing a significant disadvantage, it could have done so. By contrast, this Court does not get to make that judgment.

III

 In light of everything said above, the Court of Appeals’ treatment of Muldrow’s suit cannot survive. The court required Muldrow to show that the allegedly discriminatory transfer out of the Intelligence Division produced a significant employment disadvantage. See supra, at 4. As we have explained, that is the wrong standard. Muldrow need show only some injury respecting her employment terms or conditions. The transfer must have left her worse off, but need not have left her significantly so. And Muldrow’s allegations, if properly preserved and supported, meet that test with room to spare. Recall her principal allegations. She was moved from a plainclothes job in a prestigious specialized division giving her substantial responsibility over priority investigations and frequent opportunity to work with police commanders. She was moved to a uniformed job supervising one district’s patrol officers, in which she was less involved in high-visibility matters and primarily performed administrative work. Her schedule became less regular, often requiring her to work weekends; and she lost her take-home car. If those allegations are proved, she was left  worse off several times over. It does not matter, as the courts below thought (and Justice Thomas echoes), that her rank and pay remained the same, or that she still could advance to other jobs. See supra, at 3–4; post, at 2. Title VII prohibits making a transfer, based on sex, with the consequences Muldrow described.

 We recognize, however, that the decisions below may have rested in part on issues of forfeiture and proof. The District Court noted, for example, that Muldrow had failed to discuss in her argument against summary judgment the changes in her work schedule and vehicle access; and perhaps following that lead, the Court of Appeals did not address those harms. See supra, at 3–4. In addition, both courts suggested that some of the allegations Muldrow made about the nature of the work she did in her old and new jobs lacked adequate evidentiary support. See ibid. We leave such matters for the courts below to address. All we require is that they use the proper Title VII standard, and not demand that Muldrow demonstrate her transfer caused “significant” harm.

 We accordingly vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.