In the 1991 case Burlington Northern Railroad Company v. William D. Ford and Thomas L. Johnson, the U.S Supreme Court addressed a dispute over whether an employer could be held liable for racial discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 based on subjective evaluations that affected employee compensation. The plaintiffs, two African-American employees at Burlington Northern Railroad Company, alleged that their supervisors had given them unfairly low performance ratings due to racial bias, which resulted in lower pay raises than those received by white colleagues with similar job responsibilities and qualifications. The court ruled unanimously in favor of the railroad company stating that employers can't be held liable for racial discrimination solely based on subjective evaluations affecting employee compensation unless there is evidence showing these assessments were used as a mechanism to discriminate racially against employees. This ruling clarified how courts should interpret claims involving disparate treatment under Title VII - requiring proof not just of discriminatory impact but also discriminatory intent.

In the dissenting opinion for Burlington Northern Railroad Company v. William D. Ford and Thomas L. Johnson, Justice Marshall argued that the majority's decision to reverse a jury verdict in favor of two employees who claimed racial discrimination was incorrect because it failed to give due deference to factual findings made by lower courts. He contended that there was sufficient evidence presented at trial for a reasonable jury to conclude that the employer had discriminated against its employees on account of their race, including testimony about racially derogatory comments and disparate treatment compared with white coworkers. Furthermore, he criticized the majority’s application of legal standards regarding pretextual justifications offered by employers accused of discriminatory conduct as overly stringent and inconsistent with precedent from previous cases dealing with similar issues under Title VII of Civil Rights Act 1964.