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Article
What Happens if We Call Discrimination a Tort?
Faculty Online Publications
  • Anthony J. Sebok, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Abstract

Sandra Sperino’s Let’s Pretend Discrimination is a Tort, 75 Ohio St. L.J. 1107 (2014), argues that if the United States Supreme Court is really serious about treating Title VII and other federal anti-discrimination laws as nothing more than extensions of tort law, then the current Supreme Court’s anti-plaintiff approach is insupportable. Sperino does not hide her personal disapproval of the current trend to “tortify” federal anti-discrimination law (especially Title VII), but she recognizes that the fight against discrimination may have to be fought “through any means necessary” (to quote Malcolm X, not Sperino). So her article is a bit legal jujitsu – to take the Supreme Court’s most favored tool to weaken Title VII, and to use it to make federal anti-discrimination law friendlier to plaintiffs than it has ever been.

Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-17-2015
Publisher
Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)
Disciplines
Citation Information
Anthony J. Sebok. "What Happens if We Call Discrimination a Tort?" (2015)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/anthony-sebok/329/