Opinion ID: 752355
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Disparate Impact Under Title VII

Text: 17 The United States challenges the district court's finding that it did not establish that Warren's recruiting practices for all municipal positions had a disparate impact on black potential job applicants in violation of Title VII. We review a district court's findings of fact for clear error. See Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385, 398, 106 S.Ct. 3000, 3008, 92 L.Ed.2d 315 (1986); Scales v. J.C. Bradford and Co., 925 F.2d 901, 907 (6th Cir.1991). In the present case, we believe that the district court clearly erred in finding that the United States failed to establish racial discrimination based on disparate impact in violation of Title VII for municipal positions other than police and firefighter. 18 The Supreme Court has long held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., proscribes both overt discrimination as well as practices that are fair in form but discriminatory in operation. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 431, 91 S.Ct. 849, 853, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971). The plaintiff's burden in a Title VII disparate impact case is to prove that a particular employment practice has caused a significant adverse effect on a protected group. See Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642, 657, 109 S.Ct. 2115, 2125, 104 L.Ed.2d 733 (1989); Scales, 925 F.2d at 908 (citing Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U.S. 977, 108 S.Ct. 2777, 101 L.Ed.2d 827 (1988)). Once the plaintiff establishes the adverse effect, the burden shifts to the employer to produce evidence that the challenged practice is a business necessity. See Wards Cove, 490 U.S. at 659, 109 S.Ct. at 2126. 19 In the present case, the question before the district court was whether the United States met its burden of establishing that the City of Warren's recruiting practices for municipal positions other than police and firefighter positions resulted in a disparate impact on black job applicants. The district court held that the United States did not meet this burden because it was unable to isolate the challenged recruiting practices as the reason that Warren's applicant pool for municipal positions, other than police or firefighter positions, included few, if any, blacks before 1986. See City of Warren II, 1992 WL 509994 at  4,  27 n. 4. We believe, however, that the United States' inability to isolate the specific reason for the dearth of black applicants was not fatal to its claim under these circumstances. 20 At trial, the United States presented evidence that Warren's pre-1986 refusal to advertise police and firefighter job openings outside of predominantly-white Macomb County resulted in a practically all-white applicant pool for those positions. See id. at  3. After 1986, when Warren began to advertise municipal employment in periodicals with a circulation in the Detroit metropolitan area, the racial composition of the applicant pool for city jobs changed dramatically, and the number of black applicants increased by six standard deviations. 7 See id. at  4. In holding that Warren's recruiting methods violated Title VII, the district court noted that as a general rule, a statistical disparity of more than two to three standard deviations may properly ... support an inference of discrimination. Id. (citing Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 311 n. 17, 97 S.Ct. 2736, 2744 n. 17, 53 L.Ed.2d 768 (1977)). The district court also cited the absence of statistical data for the recruitment of municipal employees other than police or firefighters which would demonstrate that the recruitment for municipal positions generally had a disparate impact on blacks. See City of Warren II, 1992 WL 509994 at  4. 21 The United States contends that it did not produce statistical analyses of the impact of Warren's refusal to advertise municipal positions other than police or firefighter positions outside Macomb County before 1986, because the city's advertising policies combined with its preapplication residency requirement for all municipal employees until 1986 rendered such an analysis meaningless. The district court had held that Warren's pre-1986 residency requirement for all municipal positions was unlawful. See City of Warren I, 759 F.Supp. at 368. Therefore, until 1986, both the residency requirement and the advertising policies circumscribed Warren's municipal employment applicant pool. Because of this confluence of factors, the United States asserts that a comparison of the pre- and post-1986 recruitment for municipal positions other than police and firefighter positions would not isolate whether the residency requirement, the recruitment practices, or both were responsible for the absence of black applicants for Warren city employment. See City of Warren II, 1992 WL 509994 at  27 n. 4. 22 The district court interpreted the absence of specific statistical evidence demonstrating the impact of Warren's pre-1986 recruitment practices for non-police and non-firefighter positions on black applicants to mean that the United States had not met its burden of production. See City of Warren II, 1992 WL 509994 at  4. However, in earlier incarnations of the same litigation, the district court had already determined the particular sources of the alleged Title VII violations. In City of Warren II, the court acknowledged that Warren's recruiting practices for police and firefighter positions had a disparate impact on black potential employees in violation of Title VII. See id. The court also noted that the city's recruiting methods were substantially the same for all municipal job opportunities, police, fire and others. See id. at  3 (Prior to October 1986, Warren's general recruitment practice for municipal jobs was not to [advertise] in the ... newspapers of general circulation in the Detroit metropolitan area.). Six years prior, the district court held that Warren violated Title VII by maintaining a preapplication residency requirement for municipal employment before 1986. 8 See City of Warren I, 759 F.Supp. at 368. Therefore, according to the district court's own reasoning, Warren's pre-1986 employment practices for non-police and non-firefighter municipal positions violated Title VII for two reasons: the residency requirement and the challenged recruiting practices. Hence, the court's limitation of its finding that Warren's recruitment methods violated Title VII only as to police and firefighter recruitment is inconsistent with its own findings of fact and prior holdings in this case. See generally Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure: Jurisdiction § 4478 (1981) (explaining that [l]aw of the case rules have developed to maintain consistency and avoid reconsideration of matters once decided during the course of a single continuing lawsuit). Accordingly, we conclude that the district court's finding that the United States did not meet its burden of establishing the disparate impact of Warren's recruitment practices with regard to all municipal positions, was clearly erroneous. 23 In response to the district court's finding that the United States lacked statistical evidence of the disparate impact of non-police and non-firefighter municipal positions, both the United States and the City of Warren rely on the Supreme Court's analysis in Wards Cove Packing v. Atonio, 490 U.S. at 650, 657, 109 S.Ct. at 2121, 2125. Warren contends that Wards Cove requires the United States to identify the specific employment practice it challenges and offer statistical evidence demonstrating that the challenged practice has had a disparate impact on members of a protected class. Warren is correct that Wards Cove generally requires a plaintiff to meet this two-step burden. 490 U.S. at 657, 109 S.Ct. at 2125. However, Wards Cove explicitly relaxes this requirement in cases in which such labor market statistics will be difficult if not impossible to ascertain. Id. at 650, 109 S.Ct. at 2121. In those instances, measures indicating the racial composition of 'otherwise-qualified applicants' for at-issue jobs are equally probative, and where 'figures for the general population might ... accurately reflect the pool of qualified job applicants,'  Wards Cove recognizes that plaintiffs may rest their prima facie cases on such statistics as well. Wards Cove, 490 U.S. at 651, 109 S.Ct. at 2121 (citing New York City Transit Authority v. Beazer, 440 U.S. 568, 585, 99 S.Ct. 1355, 1365, 59 L.Ed.2d 587 (1979)); see also Wards Cove, 490 U.S. at 651, n. 6, 109 S.Ct. at 2121, n. 6 (citing Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 340, n. 20, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 1857, n. 20, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1977)). 24 Because of the concurrence of the residency requirement and the challenged recruiting practices, the statistical proof which Wards Cove generally requires was unattainable in this case. However, as noted above, Wards Cove allows plaintiffs to provide alternative statistics under these circumstances. Here, the United States presented statistical evidence reflecting the racial composition of the population from which Warren would have recruited its workers absent discrimination; in addition, the United States offered data comparing the number of black applicants before and after Warren's expanded recruiting campaign. See City of Warren II, 1992 WL 509994 at  3-4. The district court found that this analysis established that Warren's recruitment practices for police and firefighter positions violated Title VII. Because the recruitment practices for all municipal positions were identical, we hold that the district court clearly erred in holding that the United States did not meet its burden with regard to municipal positions other than police and firefighter positions. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the United States, finding that the city's preapplication residency requirement had a disparate impact on black potential applicants; therefore, the United States clearly met its burden with regard to that charge. See City of Warren I, 759 F.Supp. at 368. 25 Wards Cove does not preclude the United States' claim for failing to isolate and quantify the effects of Warren's discriminatory employment practices simply because two practices, both of which the district court has held to be unlawful, converged to discourage black applicants. Indeed, such a result would be anomalous and contrary to Wards Cove's explicit recognition that when, as here, certain employment practices obscure labor-market statistics, alternative statistical analysis suffices to establish a prima facie disparate impact case. See Wards Cove, 490 U.S. at 651 n. 6, 109 S.Ct. at 2121 n. 6. The United States has met its burden by proving that Warren's proffered advertising methods resulted in a statistical disparity. Plaintiffs who present a statistical analysis of some challenged practice need not rule out all other variables to prevail. See Scales, 925 F.2d at 908-09 (citing Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. at 400, 106 S.Ct. at 3009) (A plaintiff in a Title VII suit need not prove discrimination with scientific certainty; rather his or her burden is to prove discrimination by a preponderance of the evidence.). This principle is particularly applicable where the evidence actually presented on its face conspicuously demonstrates ... grossly discriminatory impact. Dothard v. Rawlinson, 433 U.S. 321, 331, 97 S.Ct. 2720, 2727, 53 L.Ed.2d 786 (1977). The fact that as of 1986, when both the durational residency requirement and the challenged recruiting practices were intact, the City of Warren employed not a single black person out of a workforce of 1500 certainly demonstrates a grossly discriminatory impact. Statistical analysis is unnecessary to establish this point. 9 City of Warren I, 759 F.Supp. at 360-63. Quite simply, the City of Warren should not escape liability because it maintained two discriminatory practices which acted concurrently to exclude black applicants. See United States v. Town of Cicero, 786 F.2d 331, 336 (7th Cir.1986) (Posner, J., concurring and dissenting) ([I]t is no defense to a discriminatory practice that it merely backs up other forms of discrimination.). 26 Moreover, Warren's assertion that disparate impact analysis is inapplicable to its recruiting practices is plainly incorrect. 10 The very purpose of Title VII's disparate impact theory is to eradicat [e] ... barriers which discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, and other protected classifications. Zamlen v. City of Cleveland, 906 F.2d 209, 216 (6th Cir.1990) (citing Griggs, 401 U.S. at 424, 91 S.Ct. at 849). Warren's limitation of its applicant pool to residents of the overwhelmingly white city, combined with its refusal to publicize jobs outside the racially homogeneous county, produced a de facto barrier between employment opportunities and members of a protected class. A plaintiff need not identify a sign reading No Blacks Need Apply before invoking Title VII. The disparate impact theory subjects any facially neutral policy with a discriminatory effect to Title VII. See Zamlen, 906 F.2d at 216 (citing Wards Cove Packing, 490 U.S. at 642, 109 S.Ct. at 2115). 27 For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the district court was clearly erroneous in finding that the United States did not establish that Warren's recruiting practices for all municipal positions had a disparate impact on black potential job applicants in violation of Title VII. Therefore, we reverse the district court's holding on this issue.