Opinion ID: 566091
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Has the Proper Geographic Scope Been Employed?

Text: 48 The Supreme Court has yet to give definitive guidance about precisely how to identify the appropriate geographic limits to a labor pool. 29 Accordingly, lower courts have differed sharply over how to define the geographic boundaries for the relevant labor market. See Hammon, 826 F.2d at 78 (looking only to the labor force of the District of Columbia itself provided an entirely artificial comparison, because the fire department recruited in Maryland and Virginia) (Starr, J., concurring); Ledoux v. District of Columbia, 820 F.2d 1293 (D.C.Cir.1987) (relying primarily upon a labor pool confined to the geographic borders of the District of Columbia to find manifest racial and gender imbalances in the D.C. police force), vacated, 841 F.2d 400 (D.C.Cir.1988). 49 In our case, the use of the Dade County geographical boundaries has gone unchallenged, and for good (geographical) reasons. However, Peightal claims that the issue to be considered is the effect of several departmental mergers. The testimony at trial reveals that during the 1970's, there were several mergers which brought in a number of all white small departments into [the Dade County Fire Department]. However, there is very limited evidence in the record regarding these mergers. Fire Chief Edward Donaldson recalled three small mergers ... Homestead, Opa-Locka and Miami Springs, none of them having minority employees, and so--which probably, just from that alone increasing, the size of the department also increased by some forty to sixty majority employees. 30 50 Although the overall disparity between the percentages of minorities and nonminorities throughout the Dade County Fire Department may have been slightly altered by these mergers (which apparently occurred many years before the Plan was adopted), there is no record evidence that, absent the mergers, a disparity great enough to justify the Plan would not have existed. 31 I conclude that the proper geographic boundaries for comparative purposes were those of Dade County. 51