Opinion ID: 4928
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Johnson's Title VII Claim

Text: Johnson contends that three of UBI's employment practices-- tests, formal educational requirements, and subjective promotion decisions by supervisors--had the effect of denying promotions to a disparate proportion of Black employees. For his prima facie case of disparate impact, Johnson need[ed] only show that the facially neutral employment standards operate more harshly on one group than another. Carpenter v. Stephen F. Austin State University, 706 F.2d 608, 621 (5th Cir. 1983). This initial burden included proof of a specific practice or set of practices resulting in a significant disparity between the proportion of Black employees at UBI and the proportion of Blacks in the pool of qualified applicants. Cox v. City of Chicago, 868 F.2d 217, 220 (7th Cir. 1989). 6 Statistical disparities between the relevant labor pool and UBI's workforce are not sufficient. Pouncy v. Prudential Ins. Co. of America, 668 F.2d 795, 800-801 (5th Cir. 1982). A plaintiff must offer evidence isolating and identifying the specific employment practices that are allegedly responsible for any observed statistical disparities. Wards Cove Packing Co., Inc. v. Atonio, 109 S.Ct. 2115, 2124 (1989) (quoting Watson v. Fort Worth Bank and Trust, 108 S.Ct. 2777, 2788 (1988) (plurality opinion)). Johnson must also offer statistical evidence of a kind and degree sufficient to show that the practice in question has caused the exclusion of applicants for jobs and promotions because of their membership in a protected group. Watson, 108 S.Ct. at 2788-89; Pouncy, 668 F.2d at 801 (The disparate impact model requires proof of a causal connection between a challenged employment practice and the composition of the work force). Absent a systematic analysis of the racial effects of all promotional criteria for each rank, Black Fire Fighters Ass'n. v. City of Dallas, Texas, 905 F.2d 63, 63 (5th Cir. 1990), Johnson cannot establish a prima facie case of disparate impact. Johnson challenges three employment practices: UBI's educational requirements, UBI's subjective system of promotion, and UBI's use of irrelevant employment tests. Johnson was able to do little more than describe the content or application of the requirements. He failed a fortiori to show the specific effect that each had on Black promotions. 7 As evidence of UBI's educational requirements, Johnson cites the testimony of Dr. Richard Jeanneret, an industrial psychologist and UBI's expert witness. Jeanneret testified concerning his study of 119 job titles at UBI, in which he interviewed UBI's employees, observed work at UBI's facilities, and studied various job descriptions. At trial, he testified about the level of education that he believed UBI employees would need to perform different jobs successfully. Jeanneret did not explain in detail which jobs at UBI required which levels of education. He simply described the number of jobs at UBI that required a high school or college degree or equivalent experience.1 Jeanneret also did not purport to testify concerning the educational levels that UBI actually required. Rather, he testified only about the skills he believed UBI's employees ought to have. He conceded that UBI's own job descriptions did not contain written educational requirements and that he was testifying from his expertise as opposed to some requirement that is imposed at Uncle Ben's. Jeanneret testified that UBI's posting notices announcing something about education or an education related item such as training in . . . chemistry or math, but he did not testify at any time that UBI actually 1 Dr. Jeanneret testified out of roughly 191 jobs, 39 of the jobs required a college degree, 27 required some college perhaps or some type of training beyond that which one normally gets at high school, 39 required either high school or some form of vocational school or some other type of equivalent education, 45 jobs would require simply a high school education or equivalent experience, and 43 jobs would require less than a high school education. 8 required employees to have any degrees or formal education level for promotion to any UBI job. Dr. Jeanneret's testimony, therefore, does not compel the conclusion that UBI had formal educational prerequisites for promotion. Aside from Dr. Jeanneret's testimony, Johnson relies on his own testimony to establish that educational requirements existed at UBI. He testified that a supervisor told him that you don't have the science background or the academic background to satisfy the needs of the job [to which Johnson sought promotion] (emphasis added). However, even if the district court credited Johnson's testimony, that testimony indicates at most that a supervisor told Johnson that he lacked necessary background in science, not that Johnson lacked a formal degree or other specific educational prerequisite to promotion. According to Johnson's own testimony, the supervisor simply informed Johnson that you don't have the skills that we are looking for. This testimony indicates at most that UBI required some unspecified level of scientific training. In contrast to the testimony of Dr. Jeanneret and Johnson himself, UBI's personnel director, Herman Koehn, presented specific testimony that UBI did not require any particular level of education for most of the jobs at UBI. Koehn testified that [w]e don't make an evaluation on whether [one] finished high school or not in terms of [whether one will] be[] offered a job. According to Koehn, he never thought about job requirements in terms of high 9 school or no high school. Rather than rely on formal education, Koehn testified that UBI would focus on the job and the ability to make numerical calculations and reading and writing. And [this would] not necessarily [be] reflected upon the number of years at school. It would be what they had learned and what they were able to do through displaying what they can do on the job. Koehn also noted that there were supervisors who had never obtained a college degree. Koehn admitted that food supervisors in research and development had to have knowledge in the sciences, but he denied that this knowledge required a specific degree. Rather, the supervisor in research and development needed an educational background in the physical sciences, chemistry, courses that relate to . . . food science. Koehn also stated that microbiology analysts ought to have academic training in microbiology, but, again, he did not specify the level of training expected. In short, Johnson presented frail evidence concerning the differing educational backgrounds that UBI required for different jobs and presented no evidence whatsoever concerning how many Black employees failed to meet UBI's requirements. Johnson contends that any educational requirements, regardless of their content, would by definition have a disparate impact on Black promotion rates, because Blacks in general tend to have less education than whites. To support this argument, Johnson cites national data from the 1970 U.S. census in his brief on appeal. The national population, however, is not the qualified labor pool against which UBI's workforce should be compared. The effect of educational requirements on the ability of Blacks in the 10 national population to get promotions at UBI has little relevance. New York Transit Authority v. Beazer, 440 U.S. 568, 584-87 (1979) (statistics showing that 63%-65% of methadone users in New York City's public programs were Black or Hispanic does not show that a disproportionate number of Black or Hispanic Transit Authority employees were dismissed for using methadone). The question is whether and how specific educational requirements affected UBI employees seeking promotions. It is not obvious that Black UBI employees in the pool of employees qualified for promotion to higher levels would not have the skills or education allegedly required for promotion. In short, there was little record evidence of the effects of educational requirements on Black promotion rates from the qualified applicant pool--employees at UBI. This is not to say that UBI's entire internal workforce constituted the appropriate statistical pool against which the proportion of Black employees at UBI should be measured. Assuming without deciding that some job zones at UBI should be compared with other lower UBI job zones, we find a complete absence of evidence that UBI employees were barred by educational requirements from reaching higher levels of employment at UBI. The district court did not clearly err in finding that Johnson failed to show that these alleged educational requirements affected Black promotion. Johnson also argues that UBI allowed its supervisors to make promotion decisions subjectively and that this practice resulted in a disparity between the promotion rates of Black and white 11 employees. However, an employer's policy of leaving promotion decisions to the unchecked discretion of lower level supervisors should itself raise no inference of discriminatory conduct. Watson, 108 S.Ct. at 2786. See also Pouncy, 668 F.2d at 801-02. Johnson has not offered any evidence that Blacks' allegedly smaller number of promotions was causally related to this subjectivity. This cannot suffice to establish a prima facie case. Wards Cove, 109 S.Ct. at 2124-25. Finally, Johnson refers to UBI's use of invalidated employment tests as one challenged employment practice that had a disparate impact on Black employees seeking promotions. There was testimony that UBI had used three different written tests to evaluate job applicants: (1) a typing test for jobs requiring typing; (2) an arithmetic aptitude test for clerical jobs requiring calculation such as statistical clerk; and (3) a mental adaptability test, which purported to test basic reading and math skills. The last test was apparently discontinued sometime between 1971 and 1973. Johnson presented no evidence of the effects of these tests on Black promotions. There was no testimony that Blacks performed more poorly on these tests than whites or that any Black employee was denied a promotion as a result of his performance on these tests. Indeed, Ethylene Burks, one of Johnson's witnesses and the only witness to testify about a Black employee's performance on the mental adaptability test, stated that the employee achieved a high score of 90 on the test. Burks also testified that achievement of 12 any particular test score was not a prerequisite for promotion and that test scores were only one factor among many that a supervisor might consider. Given the dearth of evidence on the effects of the various tests on Black promotion rates, we conclude that Johnson failed to establish any causal nexus between the scores and the alleged disparate impact. Johnson contends that this court's earlier decision in Johnson I precludes the district court from finding that he had failed to make a prima facie case. According to Johnson, the Johnson I court remanded for the narrow purpose of determining whether the appropriate pool of qualified applicants constituted the entire workforce of UBI or the population of people holding jobs similar to those at UBI in the Houston Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. Johnson also argues that, if most jobs at UBI were filled through promotion, then, under Johnson I, the district court was required to find that Johnson had succeeded in establishing a prima facie case of disparate impact. We need not determine whether or not the district court's findings went beyond the mandate of the Johnson I court. Assuming arguendo that they did, we find that intervening Supreme Court decisions justified such a departure. The mandate rule is a specific application of the 'law of the case' doctrine.' Piambino v. Bailey, 757 F.2d 1112, 1120 (5th Cir. 1985). Under this rule, the district court must follow an appellate decision on an issue in all subsequent trial proceedings unless the presentation of new evidence or an intervening change in the controlling law dictates 13 a different result or if the appellate decision is clearly erroneous and, if implemented, would work an egregious result. Falcon v. General Telephone Co., 815 F.2d 317, 320 (5th Cir. 1987). If the Johnson I court held that a disparity between the proportion of Blacks in UBI's workforce and the relevant labor pool of qualified applicants together with the use of challenged employment practices were sufficient to establish a prima facie case of disparate impact, it has been contradicted by the Supreme Court's decision in Wards Cove, the Supreme Court's plurality opinion in Watson, and this court's decision in Pouncy. As we have explained, Johnson must identify a causal nexus between a specific employment practice and a disparity in Black promotions. The district court did not err in following Wards Cove and requiring evidence that the particular challenged practices caused a disparity in Black promotions.