Opinion ID: 752355
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Probability of Hire Factor

Text: 48 Warren asks us to review the district court's refusal to reduce Fears's back pay award by a factor which represents the probability that the city would have hired him absent discrimination. The district court recognized Warren's argument that without the residency requirement more qualified applicants would have applied for police positions, and therefore, Fears's likelihood of being hired would have been less than 100%. However, the court noted that the information before it was insufficient to allow a determination representing which percentage would appropriately reflect the probability of hire. The district court correctly applied the principle that [a]mbiguity should be resolved 'against the discriminating employer' and when 'it is impossible to reconstruct the employment of each claimant, back pay equal to the maximum amount which could have been earned but for the discrimination is appropriate.'  JA at 108. 49 The cases the City of Warren cites, Ingram v. Madison Square Garden Center, Inc., 709 F.2d 807, 812 (2d Cir.1983), and Dougherty v. Barry, 869 F.2d 605, 615 (D.C.Cir.1989), are distinguishable from the present case in that they involved several victims of discrimination whose numbers exceeded the number of available positions. In this case, neither party disputes that Warren hired twenty-four of the twenty-five applicants for police jobs during the time that Fears would have applied, and by all accounts Fears was qualified for such a position, as evidenced by his securing employment with the Detroit Police Department within the same time frame. Therefore, the district court was correct in resolving the attendant ambiguity in favor of Fears, the victim of discrimination in this case. 50 Accordingly, we affirm the district court's decision not to reduce Fears's back pay by the undetermined probability of hire factor.