## Facts

- Helen Mecklenberg and several other female faculty members sued Montana State University and the Montana State Board of Regents for sex discrimination affecting salaries, advancement in academic rank, and the representation and underutilization of women in certain departments.
- The case was certified as a class action on behalf of all current and former female employees who might have suffered sex-based discrimination at Montana State.
- Trial testimony showed that women held none of the university’s senior academic administrative roles, including vice president, dean, and assistant dean positions across the colleges.
- Plaintiffs offered extensive statistical proof about rank, experience, and time-in-rank patterns for male and female faculty.
- Plaintiffs’ data included disparities such as:
  - Among faculty holding doctorate degrees, 15% of women were full professors compared with 38% of men.
  - Among faculty with more than 16 years of experience, 42% of women reached full professor compared with 79% of men.
  - Women spent almost twice as long as men at the associate-professor rank.
- Plaintiffs also presented evidence of substantial differences affecting tenure outcomes and salary levels between men and women.
- Defendants relied on an affirmative-action plan intended to address sex discrimination and argued that the disparities resulted from non-discriminatory factors.
- As part of their explanations, defendants asserted that women were more limited by family obligations and less ambitious than men.

## Issues

1. Whether Montana State University’s practices regarding faculty salaries, rank advancement, tenure, and the use of women in administrative and departmental roles violated Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination.
2. Whether plaintiffs’ statistical evidence and proof of women’s absence from senior academic administrative positions established a classwide prima facie showing of sex discrimination.
3. Whether Montana State rebutted that showing through its affirmative-action plan or other explanations for the observed disparities.

## Decision

- The district court ruled for the plaintiff class on liability, concluding that the proof supported a finding of unlawful sex discrimination affecting women faculty in pay and advancement-related outcomes.
- The court treated the plaintiffs’ statistical evidence, together with testimony about women’s exclusion from high-level administrative roles, as sufficient to support a classwide inference of discrimination.
- The court rejected defendants’ explanations to the extent they depended on generalized assumptions about women’s family responsibilities or ambition rather than job-related, individualized reasons tied to employment decisions.
- The court concluded that the existence of an affirmative-action plan did not defeat liability where the record still showed substantial disparities in rank, tenure, and salary.
- The court determined that classwide relief was warranted, though the publicly available summaries do not provide the details of the remedial order.

## Legal Principles

- Large, consistent statistical disparities in rank distribution, time in rank, tenure outcomes, and salary can support a prima facie Title VII showing of sex discrimination in a class action involving a single employer.
- Evidence that women are absent from senior academic administrative positions may support an inference that employment practices are disadvantaging women as a group.
- Employers may not justify sex-based disparities through generalized sex stereotypes; defenses must rest on legitimate, job-related explanations supported by evidence.
- An affirmative-action plan is not, by itself, a defense to Title VII liability; the court examines actual employment patterns and decision-making results, not merely the presence of a written plan.

## Conclusion

In *Mecklenberg v. Montana State Board of Regents*, the district court concluded that female faculty proved classwide sex discrimination at Montana State University through testimony about women’s exclusion from senior administrative roles and statistical evidence showing substantial disparities in rank, time to advancement, tenure, and pay, and it held that stereotype-based explanations and reliance on an affirmative-action plan did not defeat liability.


Mecklenberg v. Montana State Board of Regents, 13 EPD ¶ 11,438 (1976)