No. The court decided that forgetting to file a government complaint is not a super-serious error that kills a lawsuit. Instead, it's a technical defense that the company has to raise early in the case. The court changed its own long-held rule on this, saying the old rule was wrong and out of step with the Supreme Court and what most other courts in the country do. The court explained that the laws giving courts power to hear these cases don't say anything about having to file a complaint first. Therefore, the failure to file a complaint is a defense the company can use, but it's not a reason for the court to say it has no power to even listen to the case.

No, the railroad company didn't break the law in most cases. Even though the men might have been able to do some jobs with help, they couldn't prove the company was unfair to them because of their disabilities. For most jobs, they either weren't qualified or couldn't show the company had bad reasons for not hiring them. The court said a few parts of their case should be looked at again, but mostly the company didn't do anything wrong.

We agree with Appellants and the EEOC that Smith and Barnett are in harmony, and we apply them accordingly.

BNSF's argument runs contrary to both the EEOC guidance we quoted in Smith and the Supreme Court's statement in Barnett that the ADA sometimes requires an employer to give preference to a disabled employee.

Without a demonstrable nexus between aspersions cast on an employer's stated reasons and invidious intent, the potential falsity of an employer's proffered reason for taking an adverse employment action merely establishes that an employer's stated reason for its actions may not be its real or only reason. It does not establish that the real or 'but-for' reason was unlawful discrimination.

The evidence of but-for causation must be based on more than mere speculation, conjecture, or surmise.

Because the appellant's appendix is insufficient to permit assessment of this claim of error, we must affirm.

No. A plaintiff's failure to file an EEOC charge regarding a discrete employment incident does not bar a federal court from assuming jurisdiction over a claim; it merely permits the employer to raise an affirmative defense of failure to exhaust. The court overturned nearly forty years of its own precedent which had treated the exhaustion requirement as a jurisdictional prerequisite. The court reasoned that the Supreme Court's decision in Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., which held the timeliness of an EEOC filing was not jurisdictional, logically extends to the filing requirement itself, as both requirements are found in the same statutory provision (42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1)). Furthermore, the actual jurisdictional statute for Title VII and the ADA contains no mention of an exhaustion requirement. By recharacterizing exhaustion as a waivable affirmative defense, the court aligned the Tenth Circuit with the overwhelming majority of other federal circuits.

No, BNSF did not violate the ADA or FRSA. The court overturned prior precedent holding that filing an EEOC charge is a jurisdictional prerequisite to suit, finding it is instead a claim-processing rule subject to waiver and estoppel. However, the plaintiffs failed to establish prima facie cases of discrimination or retaliation for most positions. For the Carman-Railcar Repair positions, while plaintiffs may have been qualified with accommodation, they failed to show an inference of discrimination or that BNSF's reasons for not hiring them were pretextual. The plaintiffs also failed to show they were qualified for most other positions or that BNSF's hiring decisions were causally connected to protected activity. The court remanded claims related to Boilermaker positions for further consideration. The court affirmed summary judgment for BNSF on the FRSA claims because plaintiffs failed to show the decisionmakers knew of their protected activity or had retaliatory motives.

Lincoln v. BNSF Railway Company

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