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April 27, 2020

Pinter-Brown v. Regents of University of California (2020) 48 Cal.App.5th 55

Plaintiff, a professor of medicine at UCLA, sued The Regents of the University of California for gender discrimination. During trial, the trial court “allowed the jury to hear about and view a long list of discrimination complaints from across the entire University of California system that were not properly connected to [plaintiff’s] circumstances or her theory of the case.”

The Court of Appeal held this evidence, consisting of a campus wide report about racial and ethnic bias, and a list of discrimination complaints filed with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing against the entire University of California system, was prejudicial.

While recognizing that “[c]ourts have sanctioned the use of “evidence of an employer’s alleged gender bias ‘in the form of harassing activity against women employees other than the plaintiff’ in certain circumstances,” the court concluded that this “doctrine . . . does not permit a plaintiff to present evidence of discrimination against employees outside of the plaintiff’s protected class to show discrimination or harassment against the plaintiff.” Thus, while such evidence “can be admissible to prove intent, motive, and the like with respect to the plaintiff’s own protected class, it is never admissible to prove an employer’s propensity to harass.” The court went on to conclude that the evidence erroneously admitted at trial allowed plaintiff “to paint UCLA as a hotbed of discrimination and harassment” and, along with other errors, required a new trial.

The trial of this case was notable for the comments made by the trial judge at the outset of the case. As the Court of Appeal noted in finding that the trial judge’s comments were prejudicial, “[t]he court framed this case as part of a centuries-long fight against discrimination and inequality. The court not only invoked the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, one of our nation’s most respected and revered civil rights leaders, it also quoted one of the most well-known lines from Dr. King’s famous and venerated ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. At the apogee of the civil rights movement, Dr. King told the world that the ‘arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.’ Here, the judge told the jury it was their job to be Dr. King and to help bend that arc . . . [T]he remarks of the trial court here were not an impartial call to duty; they were a resolute and stirring call to action which stacked the deck against UCLA. It was a grave error for the court to begin a gender discrimination trial with a presentation highlighting the great achievements our nation’s civil rights leaders have made toward creating a world free of discrimination and telling the prospective jurors they were carrying on that quest.”