Opinion ID: 773428
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Disparate Impact Claim

Text: 9 To succeed on her disparate impact claim, Ms. Price must make out a prima facie case by showing that the method of promotion she challenges has an adverse impact on minorities. If she makes this showing, the City must then demonstrate that its method is job-related and consistent with business necessity. See Bryant v. City of Chicago, 200 F.3d 1092, 1094 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 121 S. Ct. 64 (2000). Ms. Price does not challenge the City's use of tests to identify those officers eligible for promotion; instead, she challenges only the City's use of date of birth as a tie breaker. Based on a statistical analysis of how the City's use of date of birth affected the minority officers who received the same score as Ms. Price on the initial eligibility tests, the district court concluded that the use of date of birth did not cause any adverse impact. This finding is supported by the record. Without demonstrating such an adverse impact, Ms. Price cannot establish her prima facie case. 3 10 Ms. Price addresses this fundamental defect in her case by arguing that the 1991 Amendments to the Civil Rights Act, Pub. L. 102-166, sec. 105(a), 105 Stat. 1071, 1074 (1991) (codified at 42 U.S.C. sec. 2000e-2(k)) (1991 Amendments), eliminated the requirement that a plaintiff demonstrate that the challenged practice has a disparate impact. According to Ms. Price, a Title VII plaintiff may now establish disparate impact liability simply by showing that an alternative employment practice with a lesser adverse impact exists and that the employer has refused to adopt it. See 42 U.S.C. sec. 2000e-2(k)(1)(A)(ii). 4 Ms. Price points to an EEOC guideline, 29 C.F.R. sec. 1607.3(B), which provides: 11 Where two or more selection procedures are available which serve the user's legitimate interest in efficient and trustworthy workmanship, and which are substantially equally valid for a given purpose, the user should use the procedure which has been demonstrated to have the lesser adverse impact. 12 Ms. Price contends that, in this case, the City should have promoted her in addition to Ward because doing so (1) would counteract the underrepresentation of minorities on the promotions list caused by the initial eligibility test, and (2) would have a lesser adverse impact on minorities than breaking the tie through use of date of birth. 13 Ms. Price's contention that the 1991 Amendments eliminated the plaintiff's burden of establishing a prima facie case is untenable. With respect to less discriminatory alternatives available to an employer, which is the statutory provision Ms. Price seeks to rely on here, the 1991 Amendments provide that a plaintiff's demonstration shall be in accordance with the law as it existed prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Wards Cove Packing Company v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642 (1989). The controlling principle was first set forth in Albemarle Paper Company v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 425 (1975). In that case, the Supreme Court made clear that an employer has no duty to justify its use of a particular employment practice unless the plaintiff establishes that the practice has a disparate impact. If the plaintiff successfully establishes a prima facie case of disparate impact and the employer successfully demonstrates that the practice is job-related, the plaintiff then has the opportunity to convince the fact-finder that the employer's explanation is, in effect, pretextual because there are less discriminatory alternatives available that the employer refuses to adopt. See id. 14 The framework established by Albemarle places the issue of whether less discriminatory alternatives exist at the end of the disparate impact analysis; certainly, there is no suggestion that a plaintiff may vault over the initial inquiries and rest her case entirely on the existence of alternatives. Moreover, Ms. Price has cited no case that supports her interpretation of the statute, and our research reveals none. To the contrary, plaintiffs consistently have been required to establish a prima facie case, both before 5 the 1991 Amendments and after. 6 We, therefore, cannot accept Ms. Price's argument that she need not establish an adverse impact in order to impose disparate impact liability on the City. 15 The employment practice Ms. Price has chosen to challenge in this lawsuit is the City's policy of using date of birth to determine seniority for purposes of promotion. As we said earlier, Ms. Price has made no attempt to demonstrate, through statistics or otherwise, that this practice has a disparate impact on minorities. The only disparate impact Ms. Price attempts to establish is an alleged underrepresentation of minorities on the list of officers eligible for promotion compiled from test scores. Any such underrepresentation, if it exists, is the result of a flaw in the initial test. If Ms. Price believes the initial test has a disparate racial impact, she ought to have attacked the test directly. However, she has disavowed expressly any such attack in this case. The City cannot be asked to adopt policies designed to correct allegedly undesirable results that have not been shown to exist. 16 Ms. Price's statutory argument therefore does not excuse the fatal failure to establish the most basic element of aprima facie case. She simply has failed to show that the City's use of a birth date as a tie breaker has any adverse impact.