DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, 413 F. Supp. 142 (E.D. Mo. 1976), was a legal case in which a United States district court held that black women could not sue for discrimination as a group when they were unable to demonstrate that the defendant discriminated against black people generally, or against women generally, and that the statutory protections against discrimination based on race and sex could not be combined to create a new protection for persons belonging to a group combining both characteristics.
Before 1970, General Motors employed only one black woman (as a janitor) in the General Motors Assembly Division in St. Louis. Until May 1, 1970, GM's factory in St. Louis excluded women from any work on the assembly line. GM's justification was that Missouri laws and regulations set a maximum workday for women at nine hours and that sending women home after a nine-hour shift could disrupt production. At the time, some women worked in the cushion room, the part of the plant producing seats and upholstery for vehicles. However, none of the employees in the cushion room were black women. General Motors stopped following Missouri's nine-hour workday for women after May 1, 1970.
During a business recession, General Motors laid off some of its employees on January 15, 1974. General Motors used a "last hired-first fired" layoff scheme to decide who was laid off as required by its collective bargaining agreement with the union. Five black women who had been laid off sued alleging race and sex discrimination, saying the "last hired-first fired" perpetuated GM's past discrimination. All five women â DeGraffenreid, Hines, Chapman, Hollis, and Bell â alleged that "but for" GM's discriminatory practices they would have applied to work at the factory between 1965 and 1967.
The claims were broken into two separate portions: race discrimination and sex discrimination. The sex discrimination claim was dismissed since the women had been hired prior to the enactment of Title VII. The race discrimination claim was consolidated with another suit brought by Black men alleging GM engaged in race discrimination.
The District Court dismissed all claims. The appeals court found that the claim surrounding the "last hired-first fired" layoff scheme was dismissed correctly, but the race discrimination claim should be re-evaluated.
The appeals court reasoning related to "last hired-first hired" is as follows
The case is notably cited by American civil rights advocate and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw as an example of the importance of considering intersectionality in discrimination claims.