On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal filed by a Black dancer in Houston, Texas, who claims she has been discriminated against by several Houston clubs that place limits on how many Black women they will hire to perform.
According to The Hill, professional dancer Chanel Nicholson filed her lawsuit in August 2021, claiming the clubs listed as defendants violated a federal law against racial discrimination in making and enforcing contracts by limiting the number of Black dancers who could work the same shift as a matter of policy. For example, Nicholson said a manager at the club Cover Girls told her she could not perform at the venue in November 2017 because there were already “too many Black girls” in the club. She also claimed that, in August 2021, she was told by the manager at a club called Splendor that the club was “not taking any more Black girls.”
Now, off the top, anyone who has been paying attention to the way the conservative-leaning Supreme Court has treated discrimination cases recently might assume Nicholson’s suit was dismissed for one (or both) of two reasons: she’s a Black woman who is a dancer — so the courts are simply not taking her seriously for reasons rooted in systemic misogynoir — or she’s not a white person filing a suit over a DEI policy, as that’s pretty much what one has to be to get a federal anti-discrimination claim to shake their way under the current administration.
Both of these might have been the real reason the plaintiff’s case was dismissed, but the reason a district court gave was that the statute of limitations was up — despite the appearance that it wasn’t.
From the Hill:
Nicholson said she was denied work repeatedly due to the quota, including in 2014, 2017 and 2021. However, her case was dismissed by a district court that concluded the applicable statute of limitations clock began ticking in 2014; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed the decision.
She asked the justices to decide when the statute of limitations starts to run in a claim of “pattern or practice” of racial discrimination. They declined to hear her case.
So, how exactly do the courts simply decide the statute of limitations clock started in 2014, and ignore the alleged offenses that happened years later? Well, apparently, all but two justices, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, determined that the more recent discriminatory acts alleged by Nicholson were not acts that stood on their own, but “continued effects” of past discrimination that is no longer actionable due to the statute.
Brown Jackson wrote in her dissenting opinion that the court’s decision to side with the district court “flouts this Court’s clear precedents.”
“We have long held that ‘[e]ach discrete discriminatory act starts a new clock for filing charges alleging that act,’ regardless of whether similar instances of discrimination have occurred in the past,” she wrote. “Because the Fifth Circuit’s contrary ruling was patently erroneous, this Court should have granted Nicholson’s petition and summarily reversed the judgment.”
Jackson’s opinion focused on the allegations from 2017 and 2021, arguing that both alleged “discrete” instances of discrimination occurred within the four years before Nicholson filed her lawsuit, making the 5th Circuit’s claim that the statute of limitations was up “patently erroneous.”
“To conclude that Nicholson’s claims are time-barred because there were earlier instances of discriminatory treatment, as the Fifth Circuit did, impermissibly inoculates the clubs’ more recent discriminatory conduct,” Jackson wrote. “If sustained discriminatory motivation is all that is required to transform recent, racially discriminatory acts into the ‘continued effects’ of earlier discriminatory conduct, then past discrimination could inexplicably prevent recovery for later, similarly unlawful conduct.”
It really makes no sense for a court to conclude that different acts of racism committed by different people at different times are all part of the same “continued effects” of the first act of racial discrimination. It’s almost as if racial discrimination is treated like a trivial thing until white people are filing suits over diversity efforts.
We’re just basically repackaging white supremacy — that’s how we’re making America great again.
SEE ALSO:
Op-Ed: Misogynoir Is Why Many Black Women Don’t Care That Telvin Osborne’s Killer Won’t Be Charged
SCOTUS Refuses To Review Discrimination Case By Black Dancer Allegedly Told By Club Owners There Were ‘Too Many Black Girls’
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