## Facts

- Entertainment Studios Network (ESN), an African American-owned group of television networks, sought carriage on Comcast’s cable system.
- Comcast declined to carry ESN’s channels and offered race-neutral business reasons, including lack of demand and bandwidth constraints.
- ESN and the National Association of African American-Owned Media alleged Comcast systematically discriminated against fully minority-owned networks and refused to contract with ESN because of race.
- Plaintiffs sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, alleging racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts.
- The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to plausibly allege that, but for racial animus, Comcast would have contracted with ESN.
- The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding it was enough at the pleading stage to allege race played “some role” (a motivating factor) in the decision.
- The Supreme Court granted review limited to the causation standard for § 1981 claims.

## Issues

1. Whether a plaintiff asserting a contracting-discrimination claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 must plead and prove that race was a but-for cause of the alleged injury.
2. Whether it is sufficient under § 1981 to allege only that race was a motivating factor in the defendant’s decision, particularly at the motion-to-dismiss stage.

## Decision

- The Court unanimously vacated the Ninth Circuit’s judgment and remanded.
- The Court held a § 1981 plaintiff bears the burden to show race was a but-for cause of the plaintiff’s injury.
- The Court held the but-for causation requirement applies throughout the lawsuit, including at the pleading stage.
- The Court declined to decide whether plaintiffs’ existing allegations satisfied the but-for standard, leaving that to the lower court on remand.
- A separate concurrence agreed with the but-for standard but emphasized § 1981 can reach discriminatory burdens imposed during the contracting process, not only outright refusals to contract.

## Legal Principles

- Absent statutory text to the contrary, federal civil rights statutes modeled on common-law causation generally require but-for causation to establish liability.
- Section 1981 requires a plaintiff to plead and ultimately prove that race was a but-for cause of the challenged contracting injury.
- A plaintiff’s burden on causation does not change across procedural stages; plausibility pleading still must allege facts supporting but-for causation.
- “Motivating factor” frameworks apply only where Congress has expressly provided them (as in certain provisions of Title VII), and cannot be imported into § 1981 without comparable statutory language.

## Conclusion

The Court held that § 1981 contracting-discrimination claims require but-for causation at both the pleading and proof stages, vacated the Ninth Circuit’s motivating-factor approach, and remanded for reconsideration under the but-for standard.


Comcast Corp. v. Nat’l Ass’n of African Am.-Owned Media, 140 S. Ct. 1009 (2020)