Big Week at Supreme Court for Employment Retaliation Cases

ACSBlog reports:

[Tomorrow], the Supreme Court will hear argument in Gomez-Perez v. Potter regarding federal employees who complained about age discrimination. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear argument in CBOCS West v. Humphries regarding whether Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act covers complaints in racial discrimination cases. The Court has not yet scheduled argument in Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville on the extent that Title VII protects employees who cooperate in an employer's internal investigation into sexual harassment.

We will have full coverage of both Gomez-Potter and Humphries (backgrounder from last October on both here) this week, with analysis of the oral argument transcripts. 

Slate's Emily Bazelon has a good piece on Humphries here.  Bazelon sees the case as I did back in October:

Unless Kennedy changes his course, which is doubtful, the court's right flank could use this case not only to block suits for retaliation like Humphries', but also to set the stage to make it ever harder to sue for discrimination under other laws. You can imagine the opinion to be written this spring, perhaps by Alito or Chief Justice John Roberts. There will be no need to get fiery—that's not these new justices' style. Instead, it can all seem unremarkable and straightforward: Congress didn't say retaliation, so Hendrick Humphries, you don't get your retaliation suit. Oh, and by the way, we look forward to citing this opinion the next time a screwed-over plaintiff comes around.

PS