Supreme Court finds city's rejection of promotion test results was unlawful racial discrimination
By throwing out the results of an examination to determine those firefighters best qualified for a promotion, the City of New Haven, Connecticut violated Title VII's prohibition against discriminatory treatment based on race, the Supreme Court ruled in a narrowly divided opinion. The case (Ricci v DeStefano, No. 07-1428, June 29, 2009) has been even more closely watched because of the role that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Obama Administration's nominee for the announced Supreme Court vacancy, played in the appeals court's decision below that upheld the city's actions.
Although the city threw out the results for all firefighters who took the exam, white firefighters sued for reverse discrimination, alleging that they were denied a chance at promotion because the city's decision to reject the exam was based on the fact that the highest-scoring candidates were white. In response, the city argued that throwing out the results was its best alternative: if it had certified the test results, it could have faced Title VII liability for relying on a test that had a discriminatory impact on minority firefighters.
New standard of statutory construction applied. Announcing a new statutory standard, the Court held, 5-4, that before an employer can engage in what otherwise would be prohibited discriminatory treatment in order to avoid or remedy an unintentional, disparate impact, the employer must have "a strong basis in evidence" to believe it will be subject to disparate impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action.
The Court decided the case by reconciling the two potentially conflicting provisions of Title VII: the prohibition against intentional acts of employment discrimination (disparate treatment), and the prohibition against policies or practices that are not intended to discriminate but, in fact, have a disproportionately adverse effect on minorities (disparate impact). Once an employee has established, on its face, a case of disparate impact, the employer still may successfully defend its practice by demonstrating that it is job related and consistent with business necessity. And, even if the employer meets that burden, the employee may still succeed by showing that the employer refuses to adopt an available alternative practice that has less disparate impact and serves the employer's legitimate needs.
In adopting a new standard, the Court looked to prior cases decided on constitutional grounds that held that certain government actions to remedy past racial discrimination—actions that were themselves based on race were constitutional only where there is a "strong basis in evidence" that the remedial actions were necessary. It reasoned that the same interests are at work in the interplay between the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions of Title VII.
The Court said that "Applying the strong-basis-in-evidence standard to Title VII gives effect to both the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions, allowing violations of one in the name of compliance with the other only in certain, narrow circumstances. The standard leaves ample room for employers' voluntary compliance efforts, which are essential to the statutory scheme and to Congress' efforts to eradicate workplace discrimination."
Applying its standard, the Court found that the city's reasons did not present a strong basis in evidence. The city could be liable for disparate impact discrimination only if the exams at issue were not job related and consistent with business necessity, or if there existed an equally valid, less discriminatory alternative that served the city's needs but that the city refused to adopt. There was no substantial basis in evidence that the test was deficient in either respect, said the Court. Finally, fear of litigation alone could not justify the city's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions under the test, it reasoned.
Read Supreme Court case.Reprinted with permission. © CCH
(Submitted June 30, 2009)
<p>Supreme Court finds city's rejection of promotion test results was unlawful racial discrimination By throwing out the results of an examination to determine those firefighters best qualified for a promotion, the City of New Haven, Connecticut violated Title VII's prohibition against</p>
Supreme Court finds city's rejection of promotion test results was unlawful racial discrimination
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