# Mary P. Valentino, Individually and on Behalf of All Other Persons Similarly Situated v. United States Postal Service

> Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit · March 26, 1982 · 674 F.2d 56

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9469024

## Case

- **Full name:** Mary P. VALENTINO, Individually and on Behalf of All Other Persons Similarly Situated, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
- **Decided:** March 26, 1982
- **Citations:** 674 F.2d 56; 218 U.S. App. D.C. 213; 28 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 32,546; 28 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 593; 1982 U.S. App. LEXIS 20678
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** On rehearing by Wald
- **Judges:** Ginsburg, Tamm, Wald
- **Cited by:** 179 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9469024

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that “[pjroof that discrimination exists within occupational categories may well support an inference of workplace-wide discrimination,” and noting that the court’s “sole point is that, in the first instance, comparisons must hone in on similarly qualified employees”
- holding that statistics that "did not demonstrate that women received grade increases less often than men as a regular occurrence" failed to establish disparate impact

## Opinion text

Statement On Rehearing
WALD, Circuit Judge.
I am voting to deny rehearing and concurred in this opinion originally, on the premise that a prima facie case of sex-based employment discrimination must provide a reasonable basis for inferring that similarly qualified men and women are treated dif *74 ferently. As the opinion explains, the data offered in this case was not sufficiently reliable to support such an inference. See majority op. at 69-71. In particular, plaintiff’s attempt to control for “special degrees” in her regression analysis failed because of the haphazard method by which such data were collected. See majority op. at 70 n.21. See also Tr. V, p. 47 (Testimony of Dr. Gastwirth). It does not follow, however, as the petitions for rehearing suggest, that plaintiffs will be required to provide job-specific data for every job requiring special qualifications. Thus I assume that in appropriate cases, plaintiffs may be able to make out a prima facie case of disparate treatment by employing reliable data that aggregate across jobs requiring specialized training. In each case, the critical question is whether there is a reasonable basis for inferring disparate treatment.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9469024. Public record. Not legal advice.