These cases involved the determination of the term "employer" under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII defines an employer as someone who "has fifteen or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year." If the employer has fewer than 15 employees, Title VII does not apply to the employer's actions. The question presented by this case was, in essence, how to count employees.
The petitioners (the EEOC and an individual plaintiff) claimed that an employer "has" an employee whenever the employer has an employment relationship with that employee in a particular week. Because this method focuses on whether the employer had 15 or more persons on the payroll in a given week, this was referred to in the courts as the "payroll method" of counting employees. The respondent advocated a narrower interpretation, focusing on whether the employee was actually performing work for the employer on a given day, a standard that would exclude part-time employees. The Court unanimously held on 1/14/97 that the ordinary meaning of this provision of Title VII was more consistent with the "payroll method." The Court concluded that the phrase "for each working day" was intended to make clear that employees who leave employment in the middle of the calendar week are not counted toward the statutory minimum number of employees. Thus, the Act applies to any employer who has an employment relationship with 15 or more employees in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.