Class Dismissed: Equal Protection, the “Class-of-One,” and Employment Discrimination After Engquist v. Oregon Department of Agriculture
Matthew M. Morrison
This Note examines whether government employees should be able to assert so-called “class-of-one” claims against public employers under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Traditional equal protection claims allege that the government has impermissibly singled out the plaintiff for disparate treatment on account of his or her race, gender, or some other trait shared with a larger class of individuals. Such claims reflect the traditional understanding of the Equal Protection Clause as a prohibition on discriminatory group classifications. Class-of-one claims, however, merely allege that the plaintiff was intentionally singled out from other similarly situated individuals and subjected to unequal treatment for no rational, legitimate reason. The plaintiff need not allege that the discrimination was motivated by his or her membership in a larger class. Rather, the plaintiff is said to comprise a “class-of-one.”