Woodson v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review

I have no quarrel with the legal principles set forth in the Court’s opinion. Of course the law does not sanction *445discharge of employees, under the guise of “willful misconduct,” if the employer applies a racial double standard in making such discharges. Thus if the facts in this case showed that “[t]he employer required one standard of conduct of black employees and another standard of conduct of white employees,” as the majority opinion declares, its decision that these employees were wrongfully discharged would undoubtedly be correct.

The difficulty is that neither the referee who heard the…