Non-legal Factors Influencing Judging In United States Courts Of Appeal In Higher Education Sex Discrimination In Employment Cases

Abstract

Despite the general increase of women in the workforce, there has been an increase in sex discrimination law suits brought in the U. S. every year (Beiner, 2005). Plaintiffs alleging gender-based workplace discrimination use three principal grounds for their claims - the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000 ), and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 (20 U.S.C.A. § 1681-1863). This study examines the important area of employment gender discrimination cases involving higher education institutions rendered in the United States Courts of Appeals between 1964 and 2013. Two separate databases were compiled for analysis, one which examined individual judges' votes and the other which examined case decisional outcomes. For the individual voting data base, 693 judicial votes were analyzed with the purpose of examining the relationship between variables. Political ideology, judges' gender and appointment era, and gender of the plaintiff served as the independent variables. The dependent variable was the individual judges' votes with a pro-plaintiff vote treated as "liberal" and a pro-defendant one as "conservative". For the case outcome measure, 231 cases from the U.S. Courts of Appeal were included in determining if composition of the three member panel influenced each case outcome. The independent variables included ideological majority of panel, gender majority of the panel, appointment era majority of the panel, and plaintiffs' gender. The dependent variable was the case decisional outcome, with pro-plaintiff decisions labeled as "liberal" votes, while pro-defendant decisions were categorized as "conservative". Results revealed that appointment era and plaintiffs' gender were significant variables influencing judicial voting in both data bases. Implications of these findings show the influence of presidential appointments on the U.S. Courts of Appeal.