Disparate Treatment

The most direct form of employment discrimination, involving intentional adverse action against an individual or group because of a protected characteristic. Disparate treatment claims are typically proven through direct evidence of discriminatory intent or circumstantial evidence under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework. For funders, individual disparate treatment cases rarely meet minimum funding thresholds alone, but systematic disparate treatment across a workforce can support a pattern-or-practice theory with much larger damages exposure.

Individual disparate treatment claims rarely meet minimum funding thresholds on their own, so funders look specifically for evidence that isolated incidents reflect a broader pattern — internal communications, comparator data across multiple employees, prior complaints — that can support a pattern-or-practice theory with materially larger exposure. Direct evidence of discriminatory intent, when it exists, is weighted heavily because it removes the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting uncertainty that otherwise clouds outcome modeling.