Opinion ID: 676060
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Intermediate Scrutiny's Second Requirement: A

Text: 175 Substantial Relation to the Important Interest 176 The present decree is not substantially related to the goal of eliminating gender discrimination in public employment. That goal requires, at a minimum, the development of gender-neutral selection procedures--whether or not developed in conjunction with a program of affirmative female appointments designed to remedy discrimination against women. Otherwise, both discriminatory selection procedures and remedial gender-based appointments would likely continue forever. While the present decrees mandate appointment of women, for thirteen years these decrees have done little or nothing to promote the development of selection procedures that are fair to women. In fact, as with race, the Board has yet to demonstrate the gender-neutrality or job-relatedness of a single employment exam. This glaring failure suggests that the decrees have, in a very real sense, perpetuated gender discrimination by allowing the Board and the City to use biased tests coupled with gender preferences. 177 It was an abuse of discretion for the district court to permit such a potentially indefinite cycle of discrimination to continue. Perpetual use of affirmative action may foster the misguided belief that women cannot compete on their own. That notion is just as pernicious and offensive as its converse, that women ought to be excluded from all enterprises because their place is in the home. Coral Constr., 941 F.2d at 932 (quoting Associated General Contractors v. City of San Francisco, 813 F.2d 922, 941 (9th Cir.1987)). When affirmative action outlives the pressing necessity that justifies its use, it begins to breed the very archaic and overbroad assumptions about the relative needs and capacities of the sexes that it was designed to erase. Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 625, 104 S.Ct. 3244, 3253, 82 L.Ed.2d 462 (1984). In view of that phenomenon, it is not surprising that the class of female employees in this case urged the district court to impose a timetable for adoption of valid, job-related selection procedures. 178 On remand, the district court should modify the decree to impose a set of prompt deadlines on the City and the Board for the development of gender-neutral selection procedures. As these procedures are developed and put into place, the City and Board must stop employing any affirmative goals or quotas for female appointments unless further affirmative action is needed to eradicate lingering effects of discrimination against women. However, because gender goals need be only substantially related (rather than narrowly tailored) to their goal, compare, e.g., Kahn v. Shevin, 416 U.S. 351, 356 n. 10, 94 S.Ct. 1734, 1737 n. 10, 40 L.Ed.2d 189 (1974) (rejecting Justice Brennan's dissenting opinion that a Florida property-tax exemption for widows that was intended to reduce the economic disparity between men and women should have been crafted as narrowly as possible to achieve that goal) with Croson, 488 U.S. at 507, 109 S.Ct. at 729 (requiring narrow tailoring), the decrees need not tie gender goals to the proportion of qualified female applicants.