Opinion ID: 566091
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: When May General Population Figures Be Used?

Text: 45 When the Supreme Court has faced an unskilled position of employment, it has compared the employer's work force both to the area's general population, Teamsters, supra, and to the area's generalized labor market, Weber, supra. In Johnson, the Court reaffirmed both comparisons and suggested that either would be appropriate, expressing no preference between the alternative pools. Johnson, 480 U.S. at 631-32, 107 S.Ct. at 1451-52, 94 L.Ed.2d at 630-31 (In determining whether an imbalance exists that would justify taking sex or race into account, a comparison of the percentage of minorities or women in the employer's work force with the percentage in the area labor market or general population is appropriate in analyzing jobs that require no special expertise ... or training programs designed to provide expertise.) (citing Teamsters, supra, and Weber, supra ). In Croson, the Court seemed to lump both choices together by referring to the composition of the relevant population. Croson, 488 U.S. at 501, 109 S.Ct. at 725, 102 L.Ed.2d at 887. 46 The district court in this case simply looked at the percentages of minorities in Dade County, and compared that with the percentages of minorities employed as firefighters in the Department, to decide whether the disparities justified an affirmative action program. 28 Because there is nothing in this record showing that the use of general population figures is improper, and no attack has in any way been leveled at its use, or assertion been made that a different labor pool should be employed than the general population to determine whether or not there was prior discrimination in the Fire Department, I would approve the district court's usage of the general population for statistical comparative purposes. 47