Pattern-or-Practice Discrimination
A claim that discrimination was the employer's standard operating procedure rather than an isolated incident, typically proved through statistical and systemic evidence and often pursued by the EEOC or as a class action.
Pattern-or-practice claims allege that discrimination was the regular, routine way of doing business at the employer, not a sporadic occurrence, and are most often brought by the EEOC or as class or collective actions rather than by individual plaintiffs. The framework traces to International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, which established a two-stage process: a liability stage in which the plaintiff proves a pattern or practice of discrimination existed, typically through statistical disparity evidence combined with anecdotal testimony, followed by individual relief hearings for class members if the pattern is established.
Statistical evidence, such as significant disparities in hiring, promotion, or termination rates between protected and non-protected groups compared against relevant applicant or workforce pools, is central to these claims, and is typically bolstered by testimony from individual employees describing specific instances consistent with the alleged pattern. Once a pattern or practice is established at the liability stage, a rebuttable presumption arises that individual class members were victims of the discrimination, shifting significant practical advantage to the class in subsequent individual relief proceedings.
The two-stage Teamsters structure means a pattern-or-practice case behaves very differently from an individual discrimination claim, with a large portion of the litigation's value concentrated in the class-wide liability stage rather than distributed evenly across individual claims. In Juricratic, pattern-or-practice matters are modeled with a distinct two-stage branch structure, since collapsing the class-wide statistical liability question and the downstream individual relief question into one dial would misstate how the case's real exposure is actually structured.
How it actually shows up
Building a pattern-or-practice case requires assembling workforce-wide statistical analysis early, typically through an expert, alongside a curated set of individual anecdotal accounts that corroborate the statistical pattern, since courts weigh the two forms of evidence together. Defense counsel challenges the statistical methodology, comparator pool selection, and any confounding explanatory variables to prevent the case from clearing the liability-stage threshold.
- Who typically brings pattern-or-practice claims?
- Most commonly the EEOC in its own enforcement actions, or private plaintiffs pursuing class or collective actions, since the claim is designed to address systemic rather than individual discrimination.
- What kind of evidence is central to a pattern-or-practice case?
- Statistical disparity evidence comparing outcomes between protected and non-protected groups, typically combined with individual anecdotal testimony that corroborates the statistical pattern.
- What happens after a pattern-or-practice is established?
- A rebuttable presumption arises that individual class members were affected, shifting the case into an individual relief stage where class members can seek specific remedies subject to the employer's opportunity to rebut individual claims.
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