Cooper v. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
383 federal appellate · 164 district · 80 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,235 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks (1993), Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (1989)
383 federal appellate · 164 district · 80 state decisions — followed in 22 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedEqual Employment Opportunity Commission v. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green · Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine · International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States · General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon · United States Postal Service Board of Governors v. Aikens
Cited together with McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green · International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States · Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine · General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon · United States Postal Service Board of Governors v. Aikens
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 1,235 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[D]emonstrating the existence of a discriminatory pattern or practice establishes a presumption that the individual class members had been discriminated against on account of race. Proving isolated or sporadic discriminatory acts by the employer is insufficient to establish a prima facie case of a pattern or practice of discrimination; rather it must be established by a preponderance of the evidence that “racial discrimination was the company’s standard operating procedure — the regular rather than the unusual practice.””
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The crucial difference between an individual’s claim of discrimination and a class action alleging a general pattern or practice of discrimination is manifest. The inquiry regarding an individual’s claim is the reason for a particular employment decision, while “at the liability stage of a pattern-or-practice trial the focus often will not be on individual hiring decisions, but on a pattern of discriminatory decisionmaking.””
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[U]nder elementary principles of prior adjudication a judgment in a properly entertained class action is binding on class members in any subsequent litigation.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.