514
Opinion of the Court
mouth of its now antagonistic former employee), but the jury must be instructed that, if they find that explanation to be incorrect, they must assess damages against the company, whether or not they believe the company was guilty of racial discrimination. The disproportionate minority makeup of the company's work force and the fact that its hiring officer was of the same minority group as the plaintiff will be irrelevant, because the plaintiff's case can be proved "indirectly by showing that the employer's proffered explanation is unworthy of credence." 5 450 U. S., at 256. Surely nothing short of inescapable prior holdings (the dissent does not pretend there are any) should make one assume that this is the law we have created.
We have no authority to impose liability upon an employer for alleged discriminatory employment practices unless an appropriate factfinder determines, according to proper procedures, that the employer has unlawfully discriminated. We may, according to traditional practice, establish certain modes and orders of proof, including an initial rebuttable presumption of the sort we described earlier in this opinion, which we believe McDonnell Douglas represents. But nothing in law would permit us to substitute for the required finding that the employer's action was the product of unlawful discrimination, the much different (and much lesser) find-5 The dissent has no response to this (not at all unrealistic) hypothetical, except to assert that surely the employer must have "personnel records" to which it can resort to demonstrate the reason for the failure to hire. The notion that every reasonable employer keeps "personnel records" on people who never became personnel, showing why they did not become personnel (i. e., in what respects all other people who were hired were better) seems to us highly fanciful—or for the sake of American business we hope it is. But more fundamentally, the dissent's response misses the point. Even if such "personnel records" do exist, it is a mockery of justice to say that if the jury believes the reason they set forth is probably not the "true" one, all the other utterly compelling evidence that discrimination was not the reason will then be excluded from the jury's consideration.
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