The Supreme Court has agreed to review several significant employment cases in its October term, including one which will determine whether the anti-retaliation provision in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects a worker from being dismissed because she cooperated with her employer's internal investigation of sexual harassment. The case at issue is a Sixth Circuit decision in Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee holding that the employee was not engaged in a protected activity, and that participation in an internal investigation initiated by the employer in the absence of any pending Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge was also not protected.

Another case will determine whether arbitration clauses negotiated in a collective bargaining agreement can waive the union members' right to go to court for statutory discrimination claims. The Second Circuit had decided in Pyett v. Pennsylvania Building Co., 14 Penn Plaza , LLC that a collective bargaining contract clause requiring the parties to arbitrate an age discrimination claim was unenforceable.

A third case involves a Ninth Circuit decision in Hulteen v. AT&T Corp. that held the company in violation of Title VII when it failed to restore pension service credits to female employees who took pregnancy leave prior to the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978. The Supreme Court will decide whether an employer engages in a current violation of Title VII when, in making post-PDA eligibility determinations for pension and other benefits, the employer fails to restore service credit that female employees lost when they took pregnancy leaves under lawful pre-PDA leave policies; and whether the Ninth Circuit's finding of a current violation of Title VII in such circumstances gives impermissible retroactive effect to the PDA.