Opinion ID: 2325341
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Constitutionality of affirmative action hiring goals.

Text: In its brief, the Council states that it does not challenge the constitutionality of either the relevant amendments to the Law Against Discrimination, N.J.S.A. 10:5-31 to 38, or the State Treasurer's affirmative action rules, N.J.A.C. 17:27-1.1 to 13.2. However, for purposes of constitutional analysis there is no distinction between a challenge to the particular minority hiring goal established for the City of Camden and a challenge to the State Treasurer's minority hiring goals in general. No argument can be made that approval of a 25% minority hiring goal for the City of Camden was arbitrary administrative agency action or action that in any other way violated appellant's constitutional due process rights. Moreover, even if we assume that municipalities have less authority than the State to legislate in affirmative action matters, a proposition we expressly decline to address, the assumption would have no relevance in this appeal. By approving the Camden plan, the State Treasurer has established a minority hiring goal for the City of Camden that operates no differently than every other minority hiring goal established by the State Treasurer pursuant to N.J.S.A. 10:5-36. The Council's constitutional challenge to the Camden minority hiring goal must therefore be interpreted as a challenge to the State Treasurer's general power to issue affirmative action hiring goals. N.J.A.C. 17:27-7.3. We begin with the premise that the Camden minority hiring goal, like the 21 county-wide hiring goals promulgated by the State Treasurer, N.J.A.C. 17:27-7.3, is not a fixed quota. The ordinance does not mandate that the contractor hire 25% minority workers, but only that the contractor make every effort to meet the [goal]. Appellant's contrary reading of the ordinance is not correct. [7] The ordinance's criteria for good faith compliance confirm that the hiring goals are not immutable quotas. At oral argument, the Department of Treasury made clear that it regarded the ordinance as establishing goals, not quotas. The Camden city attorney expressed no contrary opinion. There is substantial precedent for mandating affirmative action by recipients of government contracts. The minority hiring goals in this case are less stringent than the State of New Jersey requirements for affirmative action in public contracting approved 11 years ago by a Federal District Court in Joyce v. McCrane, 320 F. Supp. 1284 (D.N.J. 1970). Joyce upheld the Newark Plan, an affirmative action program promulgated by the State Treasurer pursuant to Federal Executive Order No. 11246 (1965) and New Jersey Executive Order No. 21 (1965). Executive Order No. 11246 required all contractors and subcontractors in federally financed projects to take affirmative action to see that applicants were not discriminated against on the basis of race, creed, color or national origin. In order to receive federal funds for a state medical school construction project, the State Treasurer promulgated an affirmative action plan setting up goals of 30% to 37% hiring of minority journeymen. As in this case, contractors faced no absolute quotas but faced sanctions if they failed to make a good faith effort at compliance. Judge Fisher approved of the Newark plan, expressly noting that hiring goals and not quotas were at issue. [T]he objectors to the implementing plan insist that it sets up quotas and is therefore invalid; however, the Plan merely sets up goals for minority employment. Sanctions cannot be imposed under the Plan if the contractors strive to meet these goals and fall short. [320 F. Supp. at 1291] Similar hiring requirements placed upon public works contractors have been upheld by federal courts in cases which the Supreme Court declined to review. See, e.g., Contractors Ass'n of Eastern Pa. v. Secretary of Labor, 442 F. 2d 159 (3rd Cir.), cert. den., 404 U.S. 854, 92 S.Ct. 98, 30 L.Ed. 2d 95 (1971) (upholding the Philadelphia Plan, requiring every good faith effort to meet hiring goals in six construction industry trades); Associated Gen. Contractors of Mass., Inc. v. Altshuler, 490 F. 2d 9 (1st Cir.1973), cert. den., 416 U.S. 957, 94 S.Ct. 1971, 40 L.Ed. 2d 307 (1974) (upholding the Boston Plan which required a not less than twenty percent ratio of minority employee man hours to total employee man hours). The above-mentioned affirmative action plans differ from the State Treasurer's plan in that they were promulgated pursuant to federal mandate, specifically the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Executive Order 11246. Here the State Treasurer has acted pursuant to state legislation. N.J.S.A. 10:5-31 to 38. However, the states have no less constitutional authority than the federal government to remedy identified past discrimination. Equal protection analysis in the Fifth Amendment area is the same as that under the Fourteenth Amendment. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 93, 96 S.Ct. 612, 670, 46 L.Ed. 2d 659, 730 (1976). The discussion in University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 98 S.Ct. 2733, 57 L.Ed. 2d 750 (1978), draws interchangeably from precedent involving Fourteenth Amendment challenges to state enactments and Fifth Amendment challenges to federal measures. Compare Bakke, supra, 438 U.S. at 291-310, 98 S.Ct. at 2748-2758, 57 L.Ed. 2d at 771-84 (Fourteenth Amendment challenge to state medical school admissions program), with Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 480-89, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 2775-2780, 65 L.Ed. 2d 902, 925-31 (1980) (Fifth Amendment challenge to Public Works Employment Act of 1977). Fullilove v. Klutznick, supra , should lay to rest any doubts about the validity under the United States Constitution of state-imposed affirmative action requirements. In Fullilove, the United States Supreme Court approved the use of racial quotas as a remedy for past discrimination in general. The Court held that the remedy of affirmative action quotas need not be limited to cases of discrimination by a particular employer. Fullilove involved the minority business enterprise [MBE] provision of the federal Public Works Employment Act of 1977, 91 Stat. 116, which required a 10 per cent set-aside of federal funds for minority businesses in state and local public works projects. The Court rejected the constitutional challenge that the MBE program impermissibly deprives non-minority businesses of access to at least some portion of the government contracting opportunities generated by the Act. 448 U.S. at 484, 100 S.Ct. at 2778, 65 L.Ed. 2d at 928. Although no single opinion commanded a majority, seven justices agreed that racial classifications are a permissible means of remedying the present effects of past discrimination, even though the present parties are innocent of discrimination. See Note, The Supreme Court, 1979 Term, 94 Harv.L.Rev. 125, 128 (1980). The Council seeks to distinguish Fullilove on the grounds that no specific legislative or administrative findings of past discrimination accompanied passage of the amendments to the Law Against Discrimination, L. 1975, c. 127, or promulgation of the State Treasurer's affirmative action rules, R. 1977, d. 364. Noting that the Supreme Court has never approved race-conscious remedies absent judicial, administrative or legislative findings of constitutional or statutory violations, Fullilove, 448 U.S. at 497, 100 S.Ct. at 2784, 65 L.Ed. 2d at 936 (Powell, J., concurring), appellant contrasts the legislative history accompanying the federal Public Works Employment Act upheld in Fullilove with the absence of such a legislative history in this case. But the Court made clear in Fullilove that limited findings of past discrimination accompanying any particular enactment should not blind a court to other evidence of past discrimination which supports remedial legislation. Thus, the United States Supreme Court rejected the argument that Congress had made insufficient findings of past discrimination before passing the Public Works Employment Act. After Congress has legislated repeatedly in an area of national concern, its Members gain experience that may reduce the need for fresh hearings or prolonged debate when Congress again considers action. 448 U.S. at 503, 100 S.Ct. at 2787, 65 L.Ed. 2d at 940 (Powell, J., concurring). The legislation here was passed ten years after Governor Hughes issued Executive Order 21 to promote equal opportunity in State employment and State public works contracting. Like Executive Order 11246, its federal counterpart, the Governor's order was a clear response to past discrimination in the construction industry. The basis for the remedy of affirmative action in New Jersey public works projects was described thoroughly by the federal district court in Joyce v. McCrane, supra . Numerous studies have made New Jersey legislators and administrators aware of the under-representation of minority workers in the construction industry. See, e.g., Office of Federal Contract Compliance, Report of the Panel on Equal Employment Opportunities in the Construction Trades in Newark, New Jersey (1970). Only by making itself oblivious to the well-documented history of minority under-representation in the construction trades in this State could the Court invalidate the challenged legislation and affirmative action rules on the basis of insufficient findings of past discrimination. It is one thing to dispense justice wearing the proverbial blindfold to ensure impartiality. It would be quite another matter to wear blinders blocking out the manifest evidence of past discrimination which underlies this remedial legislation. The Council seeks additional support for its constitutional challenge in Article 1, par. 5 of the New Jersey Constitution and Lige v. Town of Montclair, 72 N.J. 5 (1976). In Lige we struck down the use of hiring and promotion quotas to remedy past discrimination by a local police and fire department. Lige involved a finding that the Town of Montclair used an employment exam that had a disproportionately negative effect on blacks. Because the town did not offer sufficient evidence to establish that the tests were job related, the resulting presumption of discrimination was not rebutted. Pursuant to its authority under N.J.S.A. 10:5-17, the Division of Civil Rights ordered that the town adopt a quota system requiring one minority fire fighter to be hired for every white applicant hired until there were at least 15 minority officers. A similar remedy affecting police department promotions was also ordered. The Appellate Division reversed the orders, 134 N.J. Super. 277, and the Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the remedial order violated the state constitutional rights of non-minority applicants for Montclair police and fire jobs and promotions. The decision and the reasoning in Lige focused on the unfairness of rigid quotas. However, where minority hiring goals and not quotas are involved, the concerns behind the Court's result in Lige are not present. Lige struck down the Civil Rights Division's hiring and promotion quotas because they were a rejection of the concept that the more or most qualified should be hired and promoted.... It is the racial classification irrespective of qualification that mandates its invalidation. 72 N.J. at 22, 23. While the State Treasurer's affirmative action requirements strongly encourage minority hiring, they do not require the contractor to hire non-qualified employees or to disregard meaningful differences in employee qualifications. The regulations require only that the contractor make a good faith effort to attain the minority hiring goal. Moreover, there is absolutely no indication that the hiring goals have operated, or will operate, to place less qualified employees in public works contracts. We note that no contractors engaged in public work, whose businesses would be most directly affected by having to hire less qualified employees, have sought to intervene in this suit. Justice Schreiber was careful to note in Lige that the State need not be color-blind in its attempts to promote equal employment opportunity. 72 N.J. at 25 (For example, ... the Town might attempt to obtain more qualified black candidates by alerting black students in colleges and recent high school graduates of the job opportunities.); see also 72 N.J. at 53 (Pashman, J., dissenting). In Morean v. Bd. of Montclair, 42 N.J. 237 (1964), the Court sustained a plan for the transfer and assignment of pupils within a school district, although the proposal was admittedly racially motivated and avowedly sought to control racial balance as among the several junior high schools. And in New Jersey Builders Ass'n v. Blair, 60 N.J. 330 (1972), we unanimously affirmed the validity of a rule requiring owners of multiple dwellings to facilitate compliance with the Law Against Discrimination by filing annual reports disclosing rentals and requiring racial identification of tenants. Justice Mountain there approvingly cited the Philadelphia Plan case, Contractors Ass'n of Eastern Pa., supra, which, as described above, upheld a minority hiring plan similar to the plan at issue here. Moreover, Lige, in discussing Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, referred to a federal Court of Appeals case limiting use of racial quotas to instances where there has been a clear-cut pattern of long-continued and egregious discrimination, and the effect of the reverse discrimination ... [is] not ... identifiable, namely, that it is not concentrated on a relatively small group of non-minority persons. [72 N.J. at 19, quoting Kirkland v. New York State Dept. of Correctional Serv., 520 F. 2d 420, 427 (2d Cir.), reh. en banc den., 531 F. 2d 5 (2d Cir.1975)] Both Kirkland and Lige preceded the United States Supreme Court opinion in Fullilove v. Klutznick , where the high Court for the first time approved of racial quotas under circumstances analogous to those in this case where the remedy is imposed throughout an entire industry rather than upon a particular employer. The Fullilove opinion recognizes that past discrimination has placed non-minorities in a better position, and the victims of discrimination in a worse position, than each would have been in a color-blind society. Affirmative action is designed to remedy that systematic unfairness. We held in Lige that affirmative action in the form of a rigid racial quota offends the State Constitution. Quotas are not at issue in this case. We hold today that the State Treasurer's minority hiring goals for affirmative action in public contracting, including approval of the 25% Camden City goal, violate neither the United States nor the New Jersey Constitution. Minority hiring goals with criteria for good faith compliance are a proper means of ensuring that contractors will take affirmative action to promote equal opportunity in an industry where minorities have been severely under-represented.