Professor

Sandra

F.

Sperino

Sandra F. Sperino is the Elwood L. Thomas Missouri Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Missouri School of Law.  Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of discrimination law, torts and civil procedure. Professor Sperino is the author of two treatises in employment discrimination law: McDonnell Douglas: The Most Important Case in Discrimination Law (Bloomberg 2018) (a treatise focusing on the case and its progeny) and The Law of Federal Employment Discrimination (West 2019).

Her other books include Unequal: How America’s Courts Undermine Discrimination Law (w/ Thomas) (Oxford 2017) and Federal Discrimination in a Nutshell (w/ Player) (West 2017). Her recent articles are published in the Michigan Law Review, the University of Illinois Law Review, the Alabama Law Review and the Notre Dame Law Review, among others. Her article, The Tort Label, was selected for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Faculty Forum. In 2013 and 2017, she received the Goldman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. In 2015, Cincinnati Law recognized her work with the Harold C. Schott Scholarship Award; in 2018 she received the Faculty Excellence Award; and the university recognized her with a Faculty-to-Faculty Research Mentoring Award in 2019.  Professor Sperino’s scholarship has been cited by numerous courts, including the Third Circuit, the Fifth Circuit, the Eleventh Circuit, federal district courts, and the Supreme Courts of Iowa, Oregon, and Hawaii.  Her work has been featured in the New York Times, on NPR, and in other media outlets. 

In 2013 and again in 2019, she served as lead counsel on amicus briefs filed in the United States Supreme Court in cases considering the correct causal standard for federal discrimination/retaliation law.  Prior to entering academia, Professor Sperino was a law clerk in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and practiced law in St. Louis.  She graduated from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Illinois Law Review.