Becoming a Plaintiff

Rn speaking at the National Conference on Women and the Law, my goal was to describe what it takes to survive the obstacles women face in changing from "tenure victim" into "discrimination plaintiff." I wanted to share my perspective on two unenviable experiences-my original losing battle for tenure as a woman law professor and my subsequent pursuit of a sex discrimination grievance as a woman plaintiff-with that particular audience of women law professors and women law students. Making the change from victim to plaintiff involves both groups. The process requires a network of mutually reinforcing collegial relationships and there is also much that law students have done and can do to help. Several discrimination lawyers told me after the Conference that my description of becoming a plaintiff was useful from their perspective also. Every lawyer understands one obvious premise of our system of justice: every lawsuit needs a plaintiff. But not every lawyer, and certainly not every prospective client, understands what it takes to become a plaintiff. What I learned about that process may be useful in both the practice and teaching of law. My experiences began two years ago when I was denied tenure at the School of Law-Boalt Hall-at the University of California at Berkeley. In February of 1988, I filed a grievance alleging that my tenure denial was a product of sex-based discrimination, in that the Boalt Hall faculty had applied different and more onerous standards to my tenure case than it had applied to the men granted tenure at Boalt Hall during the 1980s. After a preliminary investigation, the campus-wide grievance committee at Berkeley soon issued a prima facie finding in my favor on my charge. This finding, the first of its kind in a gender case at U.C. Berkeley, meant that the committee found "sufficient reason" to conduct a full hearing on my grievance. Thus in two years my "tenure denial" evolved into "my grievance," and then into "my finding," and then into "my case." I retained two discrimination specialists as my lawyers to prepare for the grievance