In United States employment discrimination law, McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting or the McDonnell-Douglas burden-shifting framework refers to the procedure for adjudicating a motion for summary judgement under a Title VII disparate treatment claim, in particular a "private, non-class action challenging employment discrimination",[1] that lacks direct evidence of discrimination.
It was introduced by the United States Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas v. Green and Texas Dept.
Initially explaining that affected employee should merely "be afforded a fair opportunity to show that petitioner's stated reason for respondent's rejection was in fact, pretext[,]"[5] the court revised its initial guidance and added that the employee must also show that the employer's actions were in fact motivated by discrimination.
[6] Then, in Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., the Court emphasized that "a plaintiff’s prima facie case of age discrimination, combined with sufficient evidence to find that the employer’s asserted justification for its action was false, may permit the trier of fact to conclude that the employer unlawfully discriminated," and that the plaintiff need not always introduce additional and independent evidence of discrimination.
[7] In his majority opinion in McDonnell Douglas, Justice Powell also outlined circumstances that would satisfy the first burden placed on plaintiffs in Title VII cases, i.e., the initial prima facie showing of discrimination.