They claimed that the admission of the two women to the training program and any appointment of plaintiff to a firefighting position were in violation of their rights under Title VII and 42 U.S.C. S 1983. Regarding Stage One, he noted that there appeared to be no criteria for determining who passed or failed the criminal record check. However, by using Bedard's expert testimony to corroborate her statistical evidence, Legault has drastically reduced the possibility that the observed disparity is due to chance. At the preliminary injunction hearing, Bedard testified that the physical tests required upper body strength not present in the average woman. Two buttresses Bedard's conclusion that it also has a significant disparate impact on women.
Defendants argue that the tests have content validity because they resemble some firefighting tasks.
At a minimum, to demonstrate content validity an employer must show that its testing procedures accurately test important skills at a level commensurate with that legitimately required by the job. See Albemarle Paper Co . . . . Here, defendants' job analysis goes no farther than a several-year old job specification that describes a firefighter's general duties. Rather than compensate for their lack of a proper job analysis by proffering evidence that the tests have been thoroughly validated, defendants choose to rely on isolated bits of anecdotal evidence. First, Chief Zambarano defended the tests largely on the basis that they were similar to those used by four other Rhode Island cities.