Job Bias Suit ‘Death Knell’ Seen in High Court Ruling

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court dealt a sharp blow Monday to minority workers’ chances of winning job discrimination cases, ruling that employment policies that tend to concentrate non-white workers in low-paying jobs do not necessarily violate federal civil rights law.

In the 5-4 ruling, the court’s new conservative majority backed away considerably from a landmark 1971 decision that had declared illegal seemingly unbiased employment policies, such as using a test to screen applicants, that had the effect of excluding blacks or Latinos.

That 18-year-old doctrine had provided a major impetus to businesses to establish affirmative action hiring programs to avoid being sued.

Monday’s ruling will greatly ease that pressure on business, civil rights lawyers said, by making it far more difficult for plaintiffs to prove that an employer’s policies discriminate against them.

The decision brought an unusually bitter dissent from the court’s four liberals.

“One wonders whether the majority still believes that racial discrimination . . . is a problem in our society, or even remembers that it ever was,” Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote. He was joined by Justices William J. Brennan Jr., Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens.

“It’s devastating, a total change in the law,” said E. Richard Larson, counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles. “It is close to the death knell” for a substantial share of job discrimination complaints filed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Attorneys for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hailed the high court finding. They predicted that it will prevent companies from having to settle lawsuits based on “unfounded claims” of discrimination.

The ruling did not deal with cases in which a job applicant has evidence that an employer intended to discriminate or treated employees differently because of their race, sex or ethnic origin. Just last month, the high court made it somewhat easier for a professional woman to win a job bias lawsuit in which she had evidence that the male partners made unsavory comments about women.

In recent years, though, most major job bias cases have focused on allegations that an employer’s policies have had a discriminatory effect or a so-called “disparate impact” on minority members or women.

Conservative Viewpoint

This trend had irked conservatives, who have argued that civil rights laws should apply only when employers intentionally discriminate, not when a neutral job policy has an allegedly unfair effect on some groups.

Monday’s decision is a clear victory for the conservative position. The court opinion, by Justice Byron R. White, overturns a ruling based on a liberal view from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California and the other West Coast states.

The appeals court had said that a company is presumed to have violated federal civil rights law when its low-paying jobs are held almost exclusively by minority members and its skilled positions are occupied almost entirely by whites.

It is “nonsensical” to make such comparisons, White said, because non-whites are often more willing to take poorly paid, unskilled work. At the same time, there are relatively few non-whites available for skilled jobs such as “accountants, managers, boat captains, electricians, doctors and engineers,” he said.

Could Be ‘Hauled Into Court’

If the appeals court theory were upheld, White said, “any employer who had a segment of his work force that was--for some reason--racially imbalanced could be hauled into court” and forced to justify his hiring practices.

To be valid, job breakdown statistics must compare the percentages of available qualified whites with available qualified non-whites for a position, White said. In addition, minority members who allege job discrimination must also show that a “specific employment practice” caused a racial imbalance in the work force.

Finally, White said, even if the plaintiffs prove that a business policy had a discriminatory effect on them, the business can rebut the charges by supplying a legitimate reason for the policy, White said.

Taken together, these rulings will make it much more difficult for plaintiffs to win a class-action job bias suit, civil rights lawyers said.

Earlier Decision Overruled

“This is a major step backwards,” said Patrick O. Patterson Jr. of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles, which had urged the high court to uphold the appellate court decision. “The court seems to have essentially overruled Griggs vs. Duke Power,” the landmark 1971 case.

Patterson called the ruling “judicial activism” by the conservatives because it overturns an interpretation of federal law that was well-established and supported by Congress.

In their dissent, the court’s four liberals charged that the majority would tolerate business practices that “resemble a plantation economy.”

Pleased by the decision, Stephen A. Bokat, an attorney with the Chamber of Commerce, said that the court had “clarified” the law for employers and that minorities with legitimate complaints will not suffer.

Less Willing to Settle

“I don’t think employers will back off from voluntary affirmative action. I do think they won’t feel a need now to settle out of court when they are faced with off-the-wall claims of discrimination,” Bokat said.

The case before the high court centered on the hiring practices of an Alaskan salmon company, Ward’s Cove Packing Co., that employed mostly blacks, Filipinos and Alaskan Indians in its unskilled factory jobs. Whites held nearly all of the company’s better-paying skilled jobs. The company had separate dormitories and mess halls for skilled and unskilled employees.

In a 1974 suit, lawyers for the unskilled employees charged the company with having created a segregated work force and with denying minority members opportunities for advancement. After a trial, a federal judge dismissed the allegations against the company.

In 1987, however, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated part of the case. It said that the company had not intentionally discriminated against the unskilled minority workers but its hiring policies had the effect of creating an illegal, segregated work force.

Joining White’s opinion in the case (Ward’s Cove Packing vs. Atonio, 87-1387) were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the three appointees of President Ronald Reagan, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy.

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