Raytheon Co. v. Hernandez, 540 U.S. 44, 9 (2003)

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52

RAYTHEON CO. v. HERNANDEZ

Opinion of the Court

discriminatory reason under the ADA.5 And thus the only remaining question would be whether respondent could produce sufficient evidence from which a jury could conclude that "petitioner's stated reason for respondent's rejection was in fact pretext." McDonnell Douglas, supra, at 804.

II

This Court has consistently recognized a distinction between claims of discrimination based on disparate treatment and claims of discrimination based on disparate impact. The Court has said that " '[d]isparate treatment' . . . is the most easily understood type of discrimination. The employer simply treats some people less favorably than others because of their race, color, religion, sex, or [other protected characteristic]." Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324, 335, n. 15 (1977). See also Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U. S. 604, 609 (1993) (discussing disparate-treatment claims in the context of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967). Liability in a disparate-treatment case "depends on whether the protected trait . . . actually motivated the employer's decision." Id., at 610. By contrast, disparate-impact claims "involve employment practices that are facially neutral in their treatment of different groups but that in fact fall more harshly on one group than another and cannot be justified by business necessity." Teamsters, supra, at 335-336, n. 15. Under a disparate-impact theory of discrimination, "a facially neutral employment practice may be deemed [illegally discriminatory] without evidence of

5 This would not, of course, resolve the dispute over whether petitioner did in fact apply such a policy in this case. Indeed, the Court of Appeals expressed some confusion on this point, as the court first held that respondent "raise[d] a genuine issue of material fact as to whether he was denied re-employment because of his past record of drug addiction," id., at 1034, but then later stated that there was "no question that [petitioner] applied this [no-rehire] policy in rejecting [respondent's] application," id., at 1036, n. 17.

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