Robinson v. Shell Oil Company, 519 U.S. 337 (1997), is US labor law case in the United States Supreme Court in which the Court unanimously held that under federal law, U.S. employers must not engage in workplace discrimination such as writing bad job references, or otherwise retaliating against former employees as a punishment for filing job discrimination complaints.

While his race discrimination lawsuit was pending, Robinson applied for a job with another company who contacted Shell seeking a reference.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission submitted a "friend of the court" brief, saying that if former employees were not protected, they "would be chilled from taking action to report or oppose discrimination.

Thomas J wrote for the court, "EEOC quite persuasively maintains that it would be destructive to [the purposes of anti-bias law] for an employer to be able to retaliate with impunity."

As noted above, several sections of the statute plainly contemplate that former employees will make use of the remedial mechanisms of Title VII.