Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
1,230 federal appellate · 483 district · 452 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,955 later decisions (130 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Ashcroft v. Iqbal (2009), City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center (1985)
1,230 federal appellate · 483 district · 452 state decisions — followed in 40 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 10 U.S.C. § 3209 · 28 U.S.C. § 1253 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 2000E (§ 701 of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) · 42 U.S.C. § 2000E (§ 712 of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
Relies on Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Dandridge v. Williams · Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody · Griffin v. People of the State of Illinois
Cited together with Washington v. Davis · Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States · City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 3,955 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at least in part 'because of,' not merely 'in spite of,' its adverse effects upon an identifiable group.”
255 later decisions quote this exact passage“"But in this inquirymade as it is under the Constitutionan inference is a working tool, not a synonym for proof. When, as here, the impact is essentially an unavoidable consequence of a legislative policy that has in itself always been deemed to be legitimate, and when, as here, the statutory history and all of the available evidence affirmatively demonstrate the opposite, the inference simply fails to ripen into proof." Feeney, 442 U.S. at 279 n. 25, 99 S.Ct. at 2296 n. 25, 60 L.Ed.2d at 888 n. 25.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“. “Proof of discriminatory intent must necessarily usually rely on objective factors, several of which were outlined in Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 266 . The inquiry is practical. What a legislature or any official entity is ‘up to’ may be plain from the results its actions achieve, or the results they avoid. Often it is made clear from what has been called, in a different context, ‘the give and take of the situation.’ ” 442 U.S. 256 , 279 n.24, 60 L. Ed. 2d 870 , 887 n.24, 99 S. Ct. 2282 , 2296 n.24.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.