## Facts

- Claxton L. Burns, a Black employee, worked for Thiokol Chemical Corporation for about fourteen years and alleged long-running conflict with management.
- Burns sued under Title VII and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, seeking individual and class-wide relief for alleged racial discrimination in promotions and retaliatory discharge, and also asserted a claim tied to medical treatment after a workplace injury.
- To support systemic discrimination claims, Burns served extensive Rule 33 interrogatories requesting employer-wide and historical personnel information, including employee background data, job vacancies and selections, job descriptions, and general employment practices.
- Thiokol objected that the interrogatories were irrelevant, overly broad, and unduly burdensome.
- The district court largely sustained Thiokol’s objections, sharply limiting discovery, and later entered judgment against Burns on all claims after a trial on the merits.

## Issues

1. Whether a plaintiff alleging Title VII and § 1981 discrimination, including class-wide promotion discrimination, is entitled to broad discovery of employer-wide personnel and employment-practice information despite objections of irrelevance or undue burden.
2. Whether the record, if properly developed, could support a finding of class-wide racial discrimination in promotions and related employment practices.
3. Whether Burns’s discharge was for poor performance or unlawful retaliation for opposing alleged discriminatory practices.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit reversed the judgment and remanded for a new trial.
- The court held the district court erred by substantially restricting discovery of relevant employer-wide and historical personnel information.
- The court did not definitively decide the class discrimination or retaliatory discharge merits because the restricted discovery undermined development of an adequate evidentiary record.

## Legal Principles

- In Title VII and related § 1981 employment discrimination cases, especially those alleging systemic or class-wide discrimination, broad discovery into employer-wide personnel practices and comparative employee data is generally relevant.
- Historical and background employment information may be probative of whether discriminatory patterns persisted into the covered period.
- When discovery requests impose substantial burdens, the proper response is case-management tools (e.g., narrowing scope, limiting time periods, sampling, staged production), not wholesale denial of access to information central to proving a pattern of discrimination.
- Reversal and remand are warranted when improper discovery restrictions likely prevented a fair adjudication on an adequately developed record.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit required a new trial because the plaintiff was wrongly denied discovery central to proving class-oriented employment discrimination, holding that courts must permit meaningful access to employer-wide personnel and practice data while managing, rather than eliminating, reasonable discovery burdens.


Burns v. Thiokol Chem. Corp., 483 F.2d 300 (5th Cir. 1973)