Female officers will ask the full Fifth Circuit Tuesday to reinstate a lawsuit accusing the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department of using an illegal gender-based scheduling policy that allows only their male colleagues to take full weekends off.

Their case presses the court to consider reversing precedent that limits Title VII actions to employer practices that qualify as “ultimate employment decisions” such as hiring, granting leave, discharging, promoting, or compensating. That precedent wrongly narrows Title VII’s broad protections, the women say, citing recent rulings in the Sixth Circuit and D.C. Circuit overturning similar ultimate-employment-decision requirements.

Attorneys for the county counter that removing the court’s limit on what qualifies as “terms, conditions or privileges of employment” under Title VII would “open the floodgates” of litigation stemming from “trivial harms.”

Detention officers’ schedules were based on seniority until April 2019 when the county required women, but not men, to work at least one day each weekend. A sergeant allegedly admitted the new rule was based on gender, but a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 2022 affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the gender discrimination suit, saying its precedent held that scheduling didn’t qualify as an ultimate employment decision.

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