McLane Co. v. EEOC
The Supreme Court ruled that appeals courts must generally defer to a trial judge's decision on whether to enforce or block an EEOC subpoena, reviewing it only for abuse of discretion rather than starting over from scratch.
The case sends a company's records fight over a fired worker's discrimination claim back to the Ninth Circuit, which had wrongly reviewed the trial court's ruling without giving it the usual deference.
How it got here: A federal district court refused to enforce the EEOC's subpoenas; the Ninth Circuit reviewed that ruling from scratch and reversed; McLane asked the Supreme Court to fix the review standard.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Damiana Ochoa worked for eight years as a physically demanding "cigarette selector" for McLane Co. After returning from maternity leave, she failed a required physical evaluation three times and was fired. She filed a sex discrimination charge, and the EEOC investigated, eventually expanding the probe nationwide and to age discrimination, then subpoenaing employee "pedigree" information that McLane refused to hand over.
The question before the Court
When a company challenges an EEOC subpoena in court, should appeals courts double-check the trial judge's call from scratch, or just check for a clear mistake?
Why it matters
Employers and workers involved in EEOC investigations will now see subpoena disputes decided mostly at the trial-court level, since appeals courts must defer to those rulings unless they involve a clear legal error. This makes trial judges' calls in these disputes harder to overturn and should speed up EEOC investigations nationwide.
What changes now
The case goes back to the Ninth Circuit, which must now review the district court's refusal to enforce the subpoenas using the abuse-of-discretion standard instead of starting over from scratch. The Ninth Circuit may also consider McLane's arguments that the subpoenas were too burdensome. This is a final ruling on the standard of review, though the underlying subpoena dispute is not yet resolved.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the district court actually abused its discretion in refusing to enforce the subpoenas, nor did it resolve whether McLane must ultimately hand over the pedigree information -- those questions go back to the Ninth Circuit under the correct standard.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent in part — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg agreed that abuse-of-discretion is generally the right standard, but she would have affirmed the Ninth Circuit outright rather than remanding. She reasoned that the district court's refusal to enforce the subpoena rested on a pure legal error -- demanding the EEOC show more than mere relevance -- and legal errors are reviewed independently on appeal regardless of the deferential standard.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court asked which of two factors should govern how closely appeals courts scrutinize a trial court's subpoena ruling: the long-standing historical practice of appellate courts, and which court is functionally better suited to decide the issue.
- On history, the Court found that for decades before Title VII even existed, every appeals court reviewing similar labor-board subpoena rulings used the deferential 'abuse of discretion' standard -- meaning the appeals court only overturns the trial judge's call if it was clearly unreasonable, not just different from what the appeals judges might have decided. Congress adopted that same subpoena framework for the EEOC against this settled backdrop.
- On institutional capacity, the Court reasoned that deciding whether requested records are relevant to a charge, or whether a subpoena is too burdensome, are fact-heavy, close judgment calls that trial judges are better positioned to make than appeals judges, who do not hear the evidence firsthand.
- The Court rejected the court-appointed lawyer's argument that because a trial judge's task is mostly to check a subpoena's legal validity rather than exercise open-ended judgment, deferential review does not fit; the Court explained that abuse-of-discretion review can rest on practical reasons for insulating trial-court rulings, not just on how much free choice the judge has.
- The Court also rejected the argument that Fourth Amendment concerns underlying subpoena review require closer scrutiny, noting that many other subpoena and search-related decisions touching the Fourth Amendment are still reviewed deferentially.