FORD MOTOR CO. v. EEOC

JUSTICE O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether an employer charged with discrimination in hiring can toll the continuing accrual of backpay liability under § 706(g) of Title VII, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(g), simply by unconditionally offering the claimant the job previously denied, or whether the employer also must offer seniority retroactive to the date of the alleged discrimination.1

The question has considerable practical significance because of the lengthy delays that too often attend Title VII litigation.2 The extended time it frequently takes to obtain satisfaction in the courts may force a discrimination claimant to suffer through years of underemployment or unemployment before being awarded the job the claimant deserves. Court delays, of course, affect all litigants. But for the victim of job discrimination, delay is especially unfortunate. The claimant cannot afford to stand aside while the wheels of justice grind slowly toward the ultimate resolution of the lawsuit. The claimant needs work that will feed a family and restore self-respect. A job is needed—now. In this case, therefore, we must determine how best to fashion the remedies available under Title VII to fulfill this basic need.

I

A

In June and July 1971, Judy Gaddis, Rebecca Starr, and Zettie Smith applied at a Ford Motor Co. (Ford) parts warehouse located in Charlotte, N. C., for jobs as "picker-packers," "picking" ordered parts from storage, and "packing" them for shipment. At the time, no woman had ever worked in that capacity at the Ford warehouse. All three women were qualified for the positions: Gaddis and Starr recently had been laid off from equivalent jobs at a nearby General Motors (GM) warehouse, and Smith had comparable prior experience. Smith applied before any of the openings were filled, and Gaddis and Starr applied while at least two positions remained available.3 Ford, however, filled the three vacant positions with men, and Gaddis filed a charge with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), claiming that Ford had discriminated against her because of her sex.4

In January 1973, GM recalled Gaddis and Starr to their former positions at its warehouse. The following July, while they were still working at GM, a single vacancy opened up at Ford. Ford offered the job to Gaddis, without seniority retroactive to her 1971 application. Ford's offer, however, did not require Gaddis to abandon or compromise her Title VII claim against Ford. Gaddis did not accept the job, in part because she did not want to be the only woman working at the warehouse, and in part because she did not want to lose the seniority she had earned at GM. Ford then made the same unconditional offer to Starr, who declined for the same reasons. Gaddis and Starr continued to work at the GM warehouse, but in 1974 the warehouse was closed and they were laid off. They then unsuccessfully sought new employment until September 1975, when they entered a Government training program for the unemployed.

Smith applied again for work at Ford in 1973, but was never hired. She worked elsewhere, though at lower wages than she would have earned at Ford, during much of the time between 1971 and the District Court's decision in 1977.

In contrast to Gaddis', Starr's, and Smith's difficulties, at least two of the three men hired by Ford in 1971 were still working at the warehouse at the time of the trial in 1977.

B

In July 1975, the EEOC sued Ford in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, alleging that Ford had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. IV), by refusing to hire women at the Charlotte warehouse. The Commission sought injunctive relief and backpay for the victims.5

After trial, the District Court found that Ford had discriminated against the three women on the basis of their sex and awarded them backpay in an amount equal to "the difference between the amount they would have earned had they been hired in August 1971, and the amounts actually earned or reasonably earnable by them" between that date and the date of the court's order. App. to Pet. for Cert. A-170. The District Court rejected Ford's contention that Gaddis and Starr were not entitled to backpay accruing after the dates on which they declined Ford's offer of employment. Id., at A-170 to A-171.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the District Court's finding of unlawful discrimination, as well as the court's award to Gaddis and Starr of backpay that had accrued after July 1973, when the women rejected Ford's unconditional job offer. 645 F.2d 183 (1981). The court suggested that, had Ford promised retroactive seniority with its job offer, the offer would have cut off Ford's backpay liability. The court concluded, however, that without the promise of retroactive seniority, Ford's 1973 offer was "incomplete and unacceptable." Id., at 193.6

Ford then petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari, contending, inter alia, that its unconditional job offer to Gaddis and Starr should have cut off the further accrual of backpay liability.7 We granted the writ. 454 U.S. 1030 (1981).

II

Section 706(g) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 261, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(g), governs the award of backpay in Title VII cases. In pertinent part, § 706(g) provides:

Under § 706(g), then, "backpay is not an automatic or mandatory remedy; . . . it is one which the courts `may' invoke" in the exercise of their sound "discretion [which] is equitable in nature." Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 415, 416 (1975). Nonetheless, while "the power to award backpay is a discretionary power," id., at 447 (BLACKMUN, J., concurring in judgment), a "court must exercise this power `in light of the large objectives of the Act,'" and, in doing so, must be guided by "meaningful standards" enforced by "thorough appellate review." Id., at 416 (opinion of the Court) (citations omitted). Moreover, as we emphasized in Albemarle Paper, in Title VII cases

In this case, Ford and the EEOC offer competing standards to govern backpay liability. Ford argues that if an employer unconditionally offers a claimant the job for which he previously applied, the claimant's rejection of that offer should toll the continuing accrual of backpay liability.9 The EEOC, on the other hand, defends the lower court's rule,10 contending that backpay liability should be tolled only by the rejection of an offer that includes seniority retroactive to the date on which the alleged discrimination occurred. Our task is to determine which of these standards better coincides with the "large objectives" of Title VII.

III

The "primary objective" of Title VII is to bring employment discrimination to an end, Albemarle Paper, 422 U. S., at 417, by "`achiev[ing] equality of employment opportunities and remov[ing] barriers that have operated in the past to favor an identifiable group . . . over other employees.'" Ibid. (quoting Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 429-430 (1971)). See also McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 800 (1973). "[T]he preferred means for achieving" this goal is through "[c]ooperation and voluntary compliance." Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36, 44 (1974).

To accomplish this objective, the legal rules fashioned to implement Title VII should be designed, consistent with other Title VII policies, to encourage Title VII defendants promptly to make curative, unconditional job offers to Title VII claimants, thereby bringing defendants into "voluntary compliance" and ending discrimination far more quickly than could litigation proceeding at its often ponderous pace. Delays in litigation unfortunately are now commonplace, forcing the victims of discrimination to suffer years of underemployment or unemployment before they can obtain a court order awarding them the jobs unlawfully denied them. In a better world, perhaps, lawsuits brought under Title VII would speed to judgment so quickly that the effects of legal rules on the behavior of the parties during the pendency of litigation would not be as important a consideration. We do not now live in such a world, however, as this case illustrates.

The rule tolling the further accrual of backpay liability if the defendant offers the claimant the job originally sought well serves the objective of ending discrimination through voluntary compliance, for it gives an employer a strong incentive to hire the Title VII claimant. While the claimant may be no more attractive than the other job applicants, a job offer to the claimant will free the employer of the threat of liability for further backpay damages. Since paying backpay damages is like paying an extra worker who never came to work, Ford's proposed rule gives the Title VII claimant a decided edge over other competitors for the job he seeks.

The rule adopted by the court below, on the other hand, fails to provide the same incentive, because it makes hiring the Title VII claimant more costly than hiring one of the other applicants for the same job. To give the claimant retroactive seniority before an adjudication of liability, the employer must be willing to pay the additional costs of the fringe benefits that come with the seniority that newly hired workers usually do not receive. More important, the employer must also be prepared to cope with the deterioration in morale, labor unrest, and reduced productivity that may be engendered by inserting the claimant into the seniority ladder over the heads of the incumbents who have earned their places through their work on the job. In many cases, moreover, disruption of the existing seniority system will violate a collective-bargaining agreement, with all that such a violation entails for the employer's labor relations.11 Under the rule adopted by the court below, the employer must be willing to accept all these additional costs if he hopes to toll his backpay liability by offering the job to the claimant. As a result, the employer will be less, rather than more, likely to hire the claimant.

In sum, the Court of Appeals' rule provides no incentive to employers to hire Title VII claimants. The rule advocated by Ford, by contrast, powerfully motivates employers to put Title VII claimants to work, thus ending ongoing discrimination as promptly as possible.12

IV

Title VII's primary goal, of course, is to end discrimination; the victims of job discrimination want jobs, not lawsuits.13 But when unlawful discrimination does occur, Title VII's secondary, fallback purpose is to compensate the victims for their injuries. To this end, § 706(g) aims "`to make the victims of unlawful discrimination whole'" by restoring them, "`so far as possible . . . to a position where they would have been were it not for the unlawful discrimination.'" Albemarle Paper, 422 U. S., at 421 (quoting 118 Cong. Rec. 7168 (1972) (remarks of Sen. Williams)). We now turn to consider whether the rule urged by Ford not only better serves the goal of ending discrimination, but also properly compensates injured Title VII claimants.

A

If Gaddis and Starr had rejected an unconditional offer from Ford before they were recalled to their jobs at GM, tolling Ford's backpay liability from the time of Ford's offer plainly would be consistent with providing Gaddis and Starr full compensation for their injuries. An unemployed or underemployed claimant, like all other Title VII claimants, is subject to the statutory duty to minimize damages set out in § 706(g).14 This duty, rooted in an ancient principle of law,15 requires the claimant to use reasonable diligence in finding other suitable employment. Although the unemployed or underemployed claimant need not go into another line of work, accept a demotion, or take a demeaning position,16 he forfeits his right to backpay if he refuses a job substantially equivalent to the one he was denied.17 Consequently, an employer charged with unlawful discrimination often can toll the accrual of backpay liability by unconditionally offering the claimant the job he sought, and thereby providing him with an opportunity to minimize damages.18

An employer's unconditional offer of the job originally sought to an unemployed or underemployed claimant, moreover, need not be supplemented by an offer of retroactive seniority to be effective, lest a defendant's offer be irrationally disfavored relative to other employers' offers of substantially similar jobs. The claimant, after all, plainly would be required to minimize his damages by accepting another employer's offer even though it failed to grant the benefits of seniority not yet earned.19 Of course, if the claimant fulfills the requirement that he minimize damages by accepting the defendant's unconditional offer, he remains entitled to full compensation if he wins his case.20 A court may grant him backpay accrued prior to the effective date of the offer,21 retroactive seniority,22 and compensation for any losses suffered as a result of his lesser seniority before the court's judgment.23

In short, the unemployed or underemployed claimant's statutory obligation to minimize damages requires him to accept an unconditional offer of the job originally sought, even without retroactive seniority. Acceptance of the offer preserves, rather than jeopardizes, the claimant's right to be made whole; in the case of an unemployed or underemployed claimant, Ford's suggested rule merely embodies the existing requirement of § 706(g) that the claimant minimize damages, without affecting his right to compensation.

B

Ford's proposed rule also is consistent with the policy of full compensation when the claimant has had the good fortune to find a more attractive job than the defendant's, because the availability of the better job terminates the ongoing ill effects of the defendant's refusal to hire the claimant. For example, if Gaddis and Starr considered their jobs at GM to be so far superior to the jobs originally offered by Ford that, even if Ford had hired them at the outset, they would have left Ford's employ to take the new work, continuing to hold Ford responsible for backpay after Gaddis and Starr lost their GM jobs would be to require, in effect, that Ford insure them against the risks of unemployment in a new and independent undertaking. Such a rule would not merely restore Gaddis and Starr to the "`position where they would have been were it not for the unlawful discrimination,'" Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S., at 421 (citation omitted); it would catapult them into a better position than they would have enjoyed in the absence of discrimination.

Likewise, even if Gaddis and Starr considered their GM jobs only somewhat better or even substantially equivalent to the positions they would have held at Ford had Ford hired them initially,24 their rejection of Ford's unconditional offer could be taken to mean that they believed that the lingering ill effects of Ford's prior refusal to hire them had been extinguished by later developments. If, for example, they thought that the Ford and GM jobs were identical in every respect, offering identical pay, identical conditions of employment, and identical risks of layoff, Gaddis and Starr would have been utterly indifferent as to which job they had— Ford's or GM's. Assuming that they could work at only one job at a time, the ongoing economic ill effects caused by Ford's prior refusal to hire them would have ceased when they found the identical jobs at GM, and they would have had no reason to accept Ford's offers. As in the case of a claimant who lands a better job, therefore, requiring a defendant to provide what amounts to a form of unemployment insurance to claimants, after they have found identical jobs and refused the defendant's unconditional job offer, would be, absent special circumstances, to grant them something more than compensation for their injuries.

In both of these situations, the claimant has the power to accept the defendant's offer and abandon the superior or substantially equivalent replacement job. As in the case of an unemployed or underemployed claimant, under the rule advocated by Ford acceptance of the defendant's unconditional offer would preserve fully the ultimately victorious claimant's right to full redress for the effects of discrimination.25 The claimant who chooses not to follow this path does so, then, not because it provides inadequate compensation, but because the value of the replacement job outweighs the value of the defendant's job supplemented by the prospect of full court-ordered compensation. In other words, the victim of discrimination who finds a better or substantially equivalent job no longer suffers ongoing injury stemming from the unlawful discrimination.

C

Thus, the rule advocated by Ford rests comfortably both on the statutory requirement that a Title VII claimant must minimize damages and on the fact that a claimant is no longer incurring additional injury if he has been able to find other suitable work that, all things considered, is at least as attractive as the defendant's. For this reason, in almost all circumstances the rule is fully consistent with Title VII's object of making injured claimants whole.

The sole question that can be raised regarding whether the rule adequately compensates claimants arises in that narrow category of cases in which the claimant believes his replacement job to be superior to the defendant's job without seniority, but inferior to the defendant's job with the benefits of seniority. In the present case, for example, it is possible that Gaddis and Starr considered their GM jobs more attractive than the jobs offered by Ford, but less satisfactory than the positions they would have held at Ford if Ford had hired them initially. If so, they were confronted with two options. They could have accepted Ford's unconditional offer, preserving their right to full compensation if they prevailed on their Title VII claims, but forfeiting their favorable positions at GM. Alternatively, they could have kept their jobs at GM, retaining the possibility of continued employment there, but, under the operation of the rule advocated here by Ford, losing the right to claim further backpay from Ford after the date of Ford's offer. The court below concluded that under these circumstances Ford's rule would present Gaddis and Starr with an "intolerable choice," 645 F. 2d, at 192, depriving them of the opportunity to receive full compensation.

We agree that Gaddis and Starr had to choose between two alternatives. We do not agree, however, that their opportunity to choose deprived them of compensation. After all, they had the option of accepting Ford's unconditional offer and retaining the right to seek full compensation at trial, which would comport fully with Title VII's goal of making discrimination victims whole. Under the rule advocated by Ford, if Gaddis and Starr chose the option of remaining at their GM jobs rather than accept Ford's offer, it was because they thought that the GM jobs, plus their claims to backpay accrued prior to Ford's offer, were more valuable to them than the jobs they originally sought from Ford, plus the right to seek full compensation from the court.26 It is hard to see how Gaddis and Starr could have been deprived of adequate compensation because they chose to venture upon a path that seemed to them more attractive than the Ford job plus the right to seek full compensation in court.

If the choice presented to Gaddis and Starr was difficult, it was only because it required them to assess their likelihood of prevailing at trial. But surely it cannot be contended for this reason alone that they were deprived of their right to adequate compensation. It is a fact of life that litigation is risky and that a plaintiff with a claim to compensation for his losses must consider the possibility that the claim might be lost at trial, either wrongly, because of litigation error, or rightly, because the defendant was innocent. Ford's rule merely requires the Title VII claimant to decide whether to take the job offered by the defendant, retaining his rights to an award by the court of backpay accrued prior to the effective date of the offer, and any court-ordered retroactive seniority plus compensation for any losses suffered as a result of his lesser seniority before the court's judgment, or, instead, whether to accept a more attractive job from another employer and the limitation of the claim for backpay to the damages that have already accrued. The rule urged by the EEOC and adopted by the court below, by contrast, would have the perverse result of requiring the employer in effect to insure the claimant against the risk that the employer might win at trial.

Therefore, we conclude that, when a claimant rejects the offer of the job he originally sought, as supplemented by a right to full court-ordered compensation, his choice can be taken as establishing that he considers the ongoing injury he has suffered at the hands of the defendant to have been ended by the availability of better opportunities elsewhere. For this reason, we find that, absent special circumstances,27 the simple rule that the ongoing accrual of backpay liability is tolled when a Title VII claimant rejects the job he originally sought comports with Title VII's policy of making discrimination victims whole.

V

Although Title VII remedies depend primarily upon the objectives discussed above, the statute also permits us to consider the rights of "innocent third parties." City of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power v. Manhart, 435 U.S. 702, 723 (1978). See also Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 371-376 (1977). The lower court's rule places a particularly onerous burden on the innocent employees of an employer charged with discrimination. Under the court's rule, an employer may cap backpay liability only by forcing his incumbent employees to yield seniority to a person who has not proved, and may never prove, unlawful discrimination. As we have acknowledged on numerous occasions, seniority plays a central role in allocating benefits and burdens among employees.28 In light of the "`overriding importance'" of these rights, American Tobacco Co. v. Patterson, 456 U.S. 63, 76 (1982) (quoting Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U.S. 335, 346 (1964)), we should be wary of any rule that encourages job offers that compel innocent workers to sacrifice their seniority to a person who has only claimed, but not yet proved, unlawful discrimination.

The sacrifice demanded by the lower court's rule, moreover, leaves the displaced workers without any remedy against claimants who fail to establish their claims. If, for example, layoffs occur while the Title VII suit is pending, an employer may have to furlough an innocent worker indefinitely while retaining a claimant who was given retroactive seniority. If the claimant subsequently fails to prove unlawful discrimination, the worker unfairly relegated to the unemployment lines has no redress for the wrong done him. We do not believe that "`the large objectives'" of Title VII, Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S., at 416 (citation omitted), require innocent employees to carry such a heavy burden.29

VI

In conclusion, we find that the rule adopted by the court below disserves Title VII's primary goal of getting the victims of employment discrimination into the jobs they deserve as quickly as possible. The rule, moreover, threatens the interests of other, innocent employees by disrupting the established seniority hierarchy, with the attendant risk that an innocent employee will be unfairly laid off or disadvantaged because a Title VII claimant unfairly has been granted seniority.

On the other hand, the rule that a Title VII claimant's rejection of a defendant's job offer normally ends the defendant's ongoing responsibility for backpay suffers neither of these disadvantages, while nevertheless adequately satisfying Title VII's compensation goals. Most important, it also serves as a potent force on behalf of Title VII's objective of bringing discrimination to an end more quickly than is often possible through litigation. For these reasons we hold that, absent special circumstances, the rejection of an employer's unconditional job offer ends the accrual of potential backpay liability. We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

So ordered.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN and JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting.

After finding that petitioner Ford Motor Company had discriminated unlawfully against Judy Gaddis and Rebecca Starr because of their sex, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's backpay award to the two women "as a proper exercise of discretion founded on not clearly erroneous factual determinations." 645 F.2d 183, 201 (CA4 1981). The Court today reverses this unremarkable holding with a wide-ranging advisory ruling stretching far beyond the confines of this case. The Court's rule provides employers who have engaged in unlawful hiring practices with a unilateral device to cut off their backpay liability to the victims of their past discrimination.

To justify its new rule, the Court mischaracterizes the holding of the Court of Appeals, undertakes an intricate economic analysis of hypothetical situations not presented here, and invokes the rights of "`innocent third parties,'" ante, at 239, who are not before the Court. By so doing, the Court not only supplants traditional district court discretion to mold equitable relief, but also ensures that Judy Gaddis and Rebecca Starr—the only Title VII claimants whose rights are at issue in this lawsuit—will not be made whole for injury they indisputably have suffered. I find the Court's ruling both unnecessary and unfair. I dissent.

I

A

The Court frames the question presented as "whether an employer charged with discrimination in hiring can toll the continuing accrual of backpay liability ... simply by unconditionally offering the [Title VII] claimant the job previously denied, or whether the employer also must offer seniority retroactive to the date of the alleged discrimination." Ante, at 220. In my view, the Court simply and completely misstates the issue. The question before us is not which of two inflexible standards should govern accrual of backpay liability in all Title VII cases, but whether the District Court's award of backpay relief to Gaddis and Starr in this case constituted an abuse of discretion.

The Court makes frequent and puzzling reference to the "onerous burden[s]" and "sacrifice demanded by the lower court's rule." Ante, at 239, 240. See also ante, at 227 ("the lower court's rule"); ante, at 229 ("[t]he rule adopted by the court below"); ibid. ("the Court of Appeals' rule"); ante, at 230, n. 12 ("the rule applied by the court below"); ante, at 238 ("[t]he rule ... adopted by the court below"); ante, at 241 ("the rule adopted by the court below"). In fact, the Court of Appeals adopted no inflexible "rule" at all. Rather, it simply applied the well-settled and flexible principles of appellate review of Title VII remedies prescribed in Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405 (1975), and Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U.S. 747 (1976).

In Albemarle, this Court directed that, in most Title VII matters, "the standard of [appellate] review will be the familiar one of whether the District Court was `clearly erroneous' in its factual findings and whether it `abused' its traditional discretion to locate `a just result' in light of the circumstances peculiar to the case," 422 U. S., at 424 (citation omitted). With regard to Title VII backpay relief, however, the Court specified that "`the [district] court has not merely the power but the duty to render a decree which will so far as possible eliminate the discriminatory effects of the past as well as bar like discrimination in the future.'" Id., at 418, quoting Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145, 154 (1965). To achieve this purpose, "Congress took care to arm the courts with full equitable powers. For it is the historic purpose of equity to `secur[e] complete justice.'" 422 U. S., at 418 (citation omitted).1

The Court in Albemarle and Franks made clear that, in Title VII cases, the equitable discretion of district courts should be guided by a heavy presumption in favor of full backpay awards. "Rather than limiting the power of district courts to do equity, the presumption insures that complete equity normally will be accomplished." Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 786 (POWELL, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). By exercising their discretion to award full backpay relief, district courts further two broad purposes underlying Title VII. First, "the reasonably certain prospect of a backpay award . . . `provide[s] the spur or catalyst which causes employers ... to self-examine and to self-evaluate their employment practices and to endeavor to eliminate, so far as possible, the last vestiges'" of discrimination. Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S., at 417-418 (citation omitted). Second, backpay awards "make persons whole for injuries suffered on account of unlawful employment discrimination." Id., at 418.

Thus, the goal of appellate review is to ensure that the district courts have exercised their remedial discretion in the way that "allow[s] the most complete achievement of the objectives of Title VII that is attainable under the facts and circumstances of the specific case." Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 770-771. "The courts of appeals must maintain a consistent and principled application of the backpay provision, consonant with [Title VII's] twin statutory objectives, while at the same time recognizing that the trial court will often have the keener appreciation of those facts and circumstances peculiar to particular cases." Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S., at 421-422.

B

In this case, the trial court's findings of fact were uncontroverted. In July 1971, Judy Gaddis and Rebecca Starr sought jobs at petitioner Ford's automotive parts warehouse in Charlotte, N. C. "Because of their experience, each was qualified to work at Ford as a `picker-packer.'" App. to Pet. for Cert. A-159 (District Court's Findings of Fact). Ford's stated hiring practice was to fill job vacancies at the warehouse by "taking the earliest filed applications first," and selecting employees by interviewing qualified candidates. Id., at A-157. At the time Gaddis and Starr applied, however, Ford had never hired any woman to work at the warehouse.2 Id., at A-167—A-168. When Gaddis and Starr received their application forms, "a receptionist at Ford ... told them in substance that Ford did not hire women to work in the warehouse." Id., at A-159.

Despite Gaddis' persistent requests for job interviews, petitioner interviewed neither woman immediately, supposedly because no job vacancy existed. Id., at A-160—A-161. The unit supervisor testified: "Ms. Gaddis called me on several occasions and asked if I was hiring, and I said no, . . . I just have too much work to do to sit down and interview people if I'm not hiring." App. 31. Shortly thereafter, however, in August 1971, Ford hired male applicants to fill four job openings. App. to Pet. for Cert. A-159—A-160. "At least two of the men ... were offered their jobs after Gaddis and Starr applied." Id., at A-160 (emphasis in original).

Gaddis filed a sex discrimination charge with respondent EEOC in September 1971. Id., at A-154. In January 1973, Gaddis and Starr were recalled to jobs at a nearby General Motors warehouse. In July 1973, petitioner made a vague job offer first to Gaddis, then to Starr.3 The District Court found as a fact that "[t]he offer to the two women was made after Ford learned that a charge of sex discrimination had been filed with the Commission (and was prompted by a desire to bring some women into the warehouse in response to the charge)." Id., at A-162—A-163.4

Gaddis, and then Starr, turned down petitioner's job offer. The District Court found that the offer was "refused by both women since they were at that time back at work in the General Motors warehouse, having been recalled to work in January, 1973. Neither woman wished to lose accrued seniority at General Motors and neither wanted to be the only woman employed in the Ford warehouse." Id., at A-163.

Based on its factual findings, the District Court concluded as a matter of law that "Ford discriminated against ... Gaddis and Starr on the basis of their sex by failing to employ them in its warehouse in the positions filled in August, 1971." Id., at A-167. In rulings not contested here, the District Court also found that 10 other women had established prima facie cases of unlawful sex discrimination by Ford. Id., at A-168.

To determine the backpay remedy to which Gaddis and Starr were entitled, the District Court attached no legal significance to the women's decision to decline beginning employment at Ford nearly two years after they unlawfully had been denied those same jobs and six months after they had begun accumulating seniority elsewhere.5 In the ruling which the Court today implicitly deems an abuse of discretion, the District Court held that "[b]ack pay due to Gaddis and Starr shall not be affected by their refusal to accept the single position offered them in July, 1973, inasmuch as neither would have been confronted by that decision and its implications had both been hired in August, 1971." Id., at A-170—A-171.

Applying the standard of review specified in Franks, supra, and Albemarle, supra, the Court of Appeals, 645 F. 2d, at 200, affirmed "the district court's decision as a proper exercise of discretion founded on not clearly erroneous factual determinations." Id., at 201. In particular, the Court of Appeals found no abuse of discretion in the District Court's failure to terminate the backpay awards in July 1973.6

The Court of Appeals rested its narrow ruling on two key facts: that "Gaddis and Starr could accept [Ford's] offer only by forfeiting the seniority they had accumulated at General Motors and without a compensating offer of seniority at Ford to alleviate the effects of the discrimination against them in 1971." Id., at 192. (Emphasis added.) The court expressed no view as to whether Ford's backpay liability would have been tolled if Gaddis and Starr could have accepted Ford's job offer without forfeiting seniority accumulated elsewhere. Nor did the Court of Appeals decide whether the women would have been obliged to accept Ford's offer had it encompassed some compensating offer of seniority, short of full retroactive seniority.

Contrary to this Court's suggestion today, the Court of Appeals announced no general rule that an employer's "backpay liability should be tolled only by the rejection of an offer that includes seniority retroactive to the date on which the alleged discrimination occurred." Ante, at 228 (emphasis added). The Court of Appeals merely refused to announce a broad new rule, urged by Ford, requiring victims of Title VII discrimination to "accept job offers which include a loss of seniority in order to preserve their back pay rights." 645 F. 2d, at 192. Such an inflexible approach, the court decided, would frustrate Title VII's central purposes by permitting employers to present discriminatees with an "intolerable choice."7 Ibid.

II

The Court today accepts Ford's invitation, wisely declined by the Court of Appeals, and adopts its broad new rule governing awards of backpay relief in Title VII cases: henceforth, "absent special circumstances, the rejection of an employer's unconditional job offer ends the accrual of potential backpay liability."8 Ante, at 241. This ruling is disturbing in four respects.

First: The Court's new rule is flatly inconsistent with Albemarle's unambiguous directive "that, given a finding of unlawful discrimination, backpay should be denied only for reasons which, if applied generally, would not frustrate the central statutory purposes of eradicating discrimination throughout the economy and making persons whole for injuries suffered through past discrimination." 422 U. S., at 421. Applied generally, the Court's rule interferes with both objectives.

The Court's approach authorizes employers to make "cheap offers" to the victims of their past discrimination. Employers may now terminate their backpay liability unilaterally by extending to their discrimination victims offers they cannot reasonably accept. Once an employer has refused to hire a job applicant, and that applicant has mitigated damages by obtaining and accumulating seniority in another job, the employer may offer the applicant the same job that she was denied unlawfully several years earlier. In this very case, for example, Ford offered Gaddis and Starr jobs only after they had obtained employment elsewhere and only because they had filed charges with the EEOC. If, as here, the applicant declines the offer to preserve existing job security, the employer has successfully cut off all future backpay liability to that applicant. By insulating a discriminating employer from proper liability for his discriminatory acts, the Court's rule reduces his "incentive to shun practices of dubious legality," id., at 417, and hinders the eradication of discrimination.

The Court's rule also violates Title VII's second objective—making victims of discrimination whole. Again, the rule's anomalies are well illustrated by the facts of this case. Had petitioner not discriminated against Gaddis and Starr, both would have begun to work at Ford in August 1971. By July 1973, both would have accumulated nearly two years of seniority. Because of Ford's discrimination, however, each experienced long periods of unemployment and temporary employment before obtaining jobs elsewhere.9 The District Court therefore determined that only full backpay awards, mitigated by wages earned or reasonably earnable elsewhere, would make Gaddis and Starr whole.

This Court now truncates those awards simply because Gaddis and Starr refused to accept Ford's offers of beginning employment in 1973. Yet even if Gaddis and Starr had accepted those offers, they would not have been made whole. Deprived of two years of seniority, Gaddis and Starr would have enjoyed lesser health, life, and unemployment insurance benefits, lower wages, less eligibility for promotion and transfer, and greater vulnerability to layoffs than persons hired after they were unlawfully refused employment. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 30; Brief for Respondent 17. Even if Gaddis and Starr had continued to litigate the question of their retroactive seniority after accepting Ford's offer, they still would have spent many years at Ford "subordinate to persons who, but for the illegal discrimination, would have been[,] in respect to entitlement to [competitive seniority] benefits[,] [their] inferiors." Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 768.

The Court claims that its new rule "powerfully motivates employers to put Title VII claimants to work, thus ending ongoing discrimination as promptly as possible." Ante, at 230. In fact, the discrimination is not ended, because a discrimination victim who accepts a "cheap offer" will be obliged to work at a seniority disadvantage, and therefore will suffer ongoing effects from the employer's discriminatory act. The Court also alleges that its rule promotes "cooperation and voluntary compliance" with Title VII by giving both employers and claimants incentives to make and accept "unconditional" job offers. Ante, at 228-229. If the Court's rule furthers this end, however, it does so only by weakening the bargaining position of a claimant vis-à-vis the employer. Discrimination victims will be forced to accept otherwise unacceptable offers, because they will know that rejection of those offers truncates their backpay recovery. A rule that shields discriminating employers from liability for their past discrimination and coerces bona fide Title VII claimants to accept incomplete job offers is fundamentally incompatible with the purposes of Title VII.

Second: The Court's rule unjustifiably limits a district court's discretion to make individual discrimination victims whole through awards of backpay. The Court suggests that, "absent special circumstances," a district court abuses its discretion per se if it fails to terminate an employer's backpay liability at the point where that employer has extended an unconditional job offer to a discrimination claimant. Yet "[i]n Albemarle Paper the Court read Title VII as creating a presumption in favor of backpay." Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 786 (POWELL, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis added).10 Franks supplied "emphatic confirmation that federal courts are empowered to fashion such relief as the particular circumstances of a case may require to effect restitution, making whole insofar as possible the victims of ... discrimination in hiring." Id., at 764 (opinion of the Court) (emphasis added).

The Court recognizes that its new rule interferes with district court discretion to make complete backpay awards in individual cases. Thus, the Court expressly preserves the principle of appellate deference to the "sound discretion" of the trial court in "exceptional circumstances." Ante, at 238-239, n. 27. Yet, curiously, the Court offers no explanation why the facts of this very case fail to satisfy its own "exceptional circumstances" test.11 Given the Court's concession that district courts must retain their discretion to make bona fide Title VII claimants whole in some cases, I see no advantage in prescribing a blanket rule that displaces that discretion in other cases where complete relief is equally justified.

Third: I am disturbed by the Court's efforts to justify its rule by relying on situations not presented by this case. For example, the Court partially rests its rule on an "unemployed or underemployed claimant's statutory obligation to minimize damages" by accepting an unconditional job offer without seniority. Ante, at 234. Because Gaddis and Starr were fully employed when Ford finally offered them jobs, however, neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals exempted unemployed or underemployed victims of discrimination from accepting offers like Ford's.12 Similarly, the Court analyzes the hypothetical case of a Title VII claimant who "has had the good fortune to find a more attractive job than the defendant's." Ibid. But, as the Court later recognizes, there is no assurance that the present case fits this category either. After speculating at length about how Gaddis and Starr may have valued the relative worth of their Ford and General Motors jobs, see ante, at 234-236, the Court finally acknowledges that on this paper record, "[w]e cannot infer" how much Gaddis and Starr "valued their GM jobs ... solely from their rejection of Ford's offer." Ante, at 235, n. 24.

Equally unconvincing is the Court's repeated invocation of, and preoccupation with, "the rights of `innocent third parties,'" ante, at 239, and the "disruption of the existing seniority system[s]," ante, at 229, that would result from adoption of the Court of Appeals' "rule." The Court nowhere demonstrates how petitioner's labor relations would have suffered had it extended offers of retroactive seniority to Gaddis and Starr. The details of Ford's collective-bargaining agreement were not litigated in either the District Court or the Court of Appeals. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 30-31. Thus, those courts never passed on petitioner's obligation to offer retroactive seniority to Gaddis and Starr if such an offer would have disrupted its labor relations or existing seniority systems.13 Nor did the Court of Appeals decide, as a general matter, whether or not offers of retroactive seniority to discrimination claimants adversely affect the rights of incumbent employees.14 The Court cannot justify reversal in the case at hand by vague reference to classes of claimants and third parties who are not before the Court. To the extent that it seeks to do so, its intricate argument is both irrelevant and advisory.

Fourth and finally: I am struck by the contrast between the Court's concern for parties who are not here and its studied indifference to the real-life concerns of the parties whose interests are directly affected. When the Court finally confronts the choice that actually faced Gaddis and Starr, ante, at 236-239, it blithely suggests that "[a]fter all, they had the option of accepting Ford's unconditional offer and retaining the right to seek full compensation at trial" in the form of retroactive seniority. Ante, at 237. Yet the Court earlier acknowledges that "[d]elays in litigation unfortunately are now commonplace, forcing the victims of discrimination to suffer years of underemployment or unemployment before they can obtain a court order awarding them the jobs unlawfully denied them." Ante, at 228.

"If the choice presented to Gaddis and Starr was difficult," the Court continues, "it was only because it required them to assess their likelihood of prevailing at trial." Ante, at 238. Without consulting the record, the Court then states:

This is a comfortable rationale stated from the sidelines. Unfortunately, the abstract and technical concerns that govern the Court's calculations bear little resemblance to those that actually motivated Judy Gaddis and Rebecca Starr. When asked on cross-examination why she had turned down Ford's 1973 offer, Gaddis testified: "I had seniority [at General Motors] and I knew that I wasn't in danger of any layoff, where if I had accepted the job at Ford I might have worked a week or two weeks and been laid off because I would have been low seniority." App. 47 (emphasis added). Similarly, Starr testified on cross-examination: "I had seniority at General Motors. I had about fifteen people working under me. I could go to work at Ford and work a week and I knew that they could lay me off." 4 Tr. 365-366 (emphasis added).

To a person living in the real world, the value of job security today far outstrips the value of full court-ordered compensation many years in the future. The Court's elaborate speculation about the concerns that "presumably" motivated Gaddis and Starr nowhere recognizes what a Ford job without seniority actually meant to Gaddis and Starr—a job from which they could be laid off at any moment. Unlike the Court, Gaddis and Starr recognized that if they traded their jobs with seniority for jobs without seniority, they could quickly become unemployed again, long before they had the chance to vindicate their rights at trial.

To people like Gaddis and Starr, the knowledge that they might someday establish their Title VII claims on the merits provides little solace for their immediate and pressing personal needs. Starr's trial testimony reveals just how much job security meant to her:

I agree with the Court that "the victims of job discrimination want jobs, not lawsuits." Ante, at 230. See also, ante, at 221 ("The claimant needs work that will feed a family and restore self-respect. A job is needed—now"). When Ford made its 1973 offers to Gaddis and Starr, however, they had jobs, in which they had accumulated seniority despite Ford's discrimination. I therefore cannot accept the Court's conclusion that these women should have traded those jobs for uncertain employment in which back seniority could be won only by lawsuit. Nor can I justify penalizing Gaddis and Starr because they "discounted" the ultimate likelihood of obtaining court-ordered retroactive seniority at a different rate than the Court does today.

After hearing all the witnesses and appraising all the evidence, the District Court exercised its equitable discretion to shape complete backpay relief for Gaddis and Starr. In light of all the circumstances, the District Court refused to penalize Gaddis and Starr for declining Ford's 1973 job offer. Applying the correct standard of review over Title VII remedies, the Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court had exercised its remedial discretion properly. Sitting at this remove, I cannot say that Gaddis and Starr acted unreasonably. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals and thereby, for these two victims of discrimination, fulfill, and not defeat, the promise of Title VII.