Article

The Failure of Mixed-Motives Jurisprudence

Andrew Verstein

Associate Professor of Law, Wake Forest University School of Law.

For helpful comments, I am grateful to Jessica Clarke, Brandon Garrett, Mike Green, Aziz Huq, Martha Nussbaum, Eric Posner, Sean P. Sullivan, David Super, Matthew C. Stephenson, Gabriel Rauterberg, Ron Wright, the participants in the Brooklyn Law School Faculty Workshop, the George Mason Faculty Workshop, and the Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum. Andrew Homer and Abby Jacobs provided helpful research assistance.

Because legal determinations often turn on motive, and motives are often complex, courts must decide what to do about mixedmotives. For example, a boss might fire someone both for lawful reasons relating to job performance and also because of illegal prejudice. Increasingly, courts evaluate such cases under a “But-For standard,” which finds for the plaintiff only if the defendant would have acted differently but forthe bad motive. Put another way, the defendant loses unless the bad motive made some kind of causal difference in outcomes. While this approach is intuitive, I argue that the But-For standard is problematic. The widespread acceptance of the But-For standard is the most important failure in our jurisprudence of mixed motives.

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