In 2017, Dr. Julio Licinio was hired as dean of the College of Medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. An accomplished psychiatrist, he brought expertise and a commitment to fairness to his role. As dean, he observed what he felt was an entrenched system of discriminatory practices, which he raised with the school’s administration.
One example was the university’s decision to cut his wife’s pay. Dr. Ma Li Wong, a professor who is of Asian ancestry and culturally Hispanic, faced a salary reduction that other professors didn’t experience. A month after Dr. Licinio raised this issue with the administration, he was abruptly removed from his dean position and his salary was slashed by more than half and without the eight-month transition period guaranteed in his contract. He had never received negative performance reviews. A university human resources official admitted that Dr. Licinio’s whistleblowing activities “could have been part of” the reason for his demotion.
Dr. Licinio sued. That’s when he encountered what’s known as the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting test, which stacked the deck against him. Rather than simply asking whether discrimination occurred—the straightforward question Congress directed courts to evaluate—federal courts apply a complicated judge-made framework that has no basis in law.
The McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting test forces plaintiffs through three artificial steps that make discrimination cases much harder to win. First, plaintiffs must prove they have sufficient evidence of discrimination, adhering to judge-made requirements Congress never wrote. Then, if employers offer any non-discriminatory reason for their actions (which they always do), plaintiffs must prove those reasons are pretextual—a heightened standard that goes far beyond what Title VII requires.
Despite evidence of retaliation—including suspicious timing, no prior performance issues, and a university representative’s own admission about reasons for his demotion—the courts dismissed Dr. Licinio’s case because he couldn’t meet this judge-made test’s requirements.
For over 50 years, federal judges and Supreme Court justices have criticized the McDonnell Douglas framework as confusing, unworkable, and divorced from the law Congress actually wrote.
Dr. Licinio is asking the Supreme Court to restore the constitutional principle that only Congress makes laws, ensuring employees like him can access the clear civil rights protections Congress provided without navigating unnecessary judicial obstacles.
What’s At Stake?
- The McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework is a judge-made barrier that denies Americans the opportunity to prove their claims of discrimination in court. It has no basis in the text of Title VII.
- When courts impose additional requirements that Congress never wrote, they exceed their constitutional authority and make it harder for discrimination victims to access the remedies Congress provided.
