SCOTUS pondering cat's-paw doctrine

I just finished reading the briefs in Staub v. Proctor Hospital, in which SCOTUS is teeing up the answer to this question: Is an employer liable for an unlawful employment action if the ultimate-decision maker was not motivated by an unlawful motive but a subordinate who influenced the decision was? Put a different way, what is employer liability when the guy who pulled the trigger is pure, but the guy who loads the gun is not? The 7th Circuit's opinion reasons that for an employer to be liable, the biased decision-maker must have had a singular influence on the decision. In other words, no liability attaches as long as the ultimate decision-maker, in making the decision, relied at least in part on information from an unbiased decision-maker. And, the court went further, holding that if the ultimate decision-maker conducts her own investigation into the reasons for the adverse employment action, then there is no employer liability. The plaintiff doesn't see it this way. He relies upon agency. Here's his one-two punch from his brief: 1. An employer gets tagged for a discriminatory act if the employer empowers the supervisor to take the action he did (such issuing as a written reprimand) and 2. "So long as the official whose actions led to injury was an agent, it is unimportant whether that official was the first or last in the series of decisionmakers involved." I read this as being strict liability. I think the court will adopt something in the middle. Perhaps it will create a presumption that the bad actor 's act influenced the decision, then make the employer rebut the presumption. Oral argument was scheduled for Nov. 2.