July 23, 2025
A little more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court eased the requirements for bringing workplace bias claims in Muldrow v. St. Louis, it’s clear that the ruling is helping more workers keep discrimination cases alive.
In the Muldrow ruling, handed down in April 2024, the justices unanimously disavowed the heightened legal hurdles that some lower courts had imposed to block workplace bias cases over employment actions considered to have less serious consequences. Under the new standard, employees need not show they faced “significant” harm, but rather “some harm,” to move their suit ahead.
While the ruling marked a win for employees suing over discrimination, questions remained over whether the new precedent, which arose in the context of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, could be invoked in cases under other anti-discrimination laws.
Additionally, the decision only addressed an unwanted job transfer, so it was not clear in Muldrow’s immediate wake whether a broader scope of workplace decisions could now sustain a legal claim.
In the 15 months since the decree came down — during which Muldrow has been cited by courts more than 540 times — the judiciary has yielded some early answers, and experts said they’ve largely been more good news for employees.
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Worker-side attorney Harini Srinivasan, a partner in Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC’s civil rights and employment litigation practice, said Muldrow has given workers a stronger chance of addressing the more insidious forms of bias that can pervade workplaces.
“I’m seeing Muldrow being advanced as a possible tool to get at more subtle forms of discrimination, and holding employers to a standard that is still within the bounds of well-established case law, but is more nuanced,” she said. “It allows for more of these narrative-rich stories to prevail.”