SAN FRANCISCO—A California Supreme Court decision that “stray remarks” by people who do not make hiring or firing decisions can be used as evidence in discrimination cases will make it harder for employers to win dismissals of such litigation, observers say.

However, the Aug. 5 decision in Brian Reid vs. Google Inc. is unlikely to materially help plaintiffs with otherwise weak cases, observers say.

The focus of the ruling is the “stray remarks” doctrine discussed in U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's 1989 concurring opinion in Price Waterhouse vs. Ann Hopkins, in which she said such comments by nondecisionmakers “are irrelevant and insufficient to avoid summary judgment” to dismiss a case, according to the California high court's decision.

The ruling said Mr. Reid, who was 52 when he started at Mountain View, Calif.-based Google in 2002 as director of operations and engineering, was told that his opinions and ideas were “obsolete” and “too old to matter;” that he was “slow,” “fuzzy,” “sluggish” and “lethargic.” Co-workers also described him as an “old fuddy-duddy,” according to court documents.

In October 2003, he was removed from his operations position, which was assumed by someone 15 years younger, and put in charge of an in-house graduate degree program. He was not, however, given a budget or any staff.

Mr. Reid was terminated in February 2004. Google said this was because of “job elimination” and “poor performance,” while Mr. Reid said he was told it was because of a “lack of "cultural fit,'” according to the opinion.

Mr. Reid sued Google in 2004, alleging age discrimination among other charges. A trial court granted Google's motion for summary judgment dismissing the case, but a state appellate court reinstated it.

In unanimously upholding the California Court of Appeal decision, the California Supreme Court said “federal courts have widely divergent views regarding who constitutes a decisionmaker and how much separation must exist between the remark and an adverse employment decision for the remark to be considered stray.

“As Reid points out, the only consistency to the federal stray remarks cases is that the probative value of the challenged remarks turns on the facts of each case. That was the approach taken by the Court of Appeal here.”

Eric M. Steinert, a partner with law firm Seyfarth Shaw L.L.P. in San Francisco, who was not involved in the case, said California employers “had relied heavily and successfully” on the stray remarks doctrine in discrimination cases “where the plaintiff was relying on a remark or comment in the workplace that was not directly related to the employment decision.”

As a short-term result of the decision, “it will be harder for employers to get summary judgment in cases where they previously would have relied on that doctrine,” Mr. Steinert said.

In the long run, though, “weak employment discrimination cases will still be subject to summary judgment. It's just that employers will not be able to rely as heavily on federal cases, and judges will have greater latitude to consider comments in the workplace, even if they don't directly tie into the employment decision,” Mr. Steinert said.

Dominick J. Messiha, a shareholder with law firm Littler Mendelson P.C. in Los Angeles, said, “An irrelevant comment from a nondecisionmaker prior to Reid vs. Google might have been excluded per se under the stray comments doctrine. After Reid vs. Google, the comment is still as irrelevant as it was before. It's just that the court is going to have to weigh it along with the rest of the evidence to reach essentially the same conclusion.”

It is a change in the process, but it will “not necessarily change the outcome” of a case, Mr. Messiha said.

Aaron A. Roblan, a shareholder with law firm Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart P.C. in San Francisco, said the decision could be influential outside California, particularly in Oregon and Washington, “two states in which the definitions of sexual harassment, age discrimination and disability discrimination have been expanding along the same lines as California.”