Opinion ID: 5539
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prima Facie Violation.

Text: The EEOC may establish a prima facie violation of Title VII through statistical evidence, evidence of Olson's treatment of individual job applicants and employees, or both. See Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 97 S. Ct. 2736 (1977); see also Pouncy v. Prudential Ins. Co., 668 F.2d 795, 802 (5th Cir. 1982) (When the statistical showing is sufficiently strong in a disparate treatment action, the plaintiffs' prima facie case can be made without additional evidence establishing that the defendant purposefully treated minorities protected under Title VII less favorably than other persons.). EEOC presented both statistical and anecdotal evidence. While we do not dispute the district court's assessment of the anecdotal testimony of rejected applicants Kathy Richie, Angela Burks, Ruby Cantu, Lillie Lewis, and Jessica J. Jones, we hold that the district court erred both in its assessment of the statistical evidence offered by the EEOC and in 6 its conclusion that the EEOC failed to establish a prima facie violation of Title VII. The district court correctly observes that [t]he usefulness of statistical data in assessing discriminatory practices depends . . . on the validity of the basic reference population as the pole star being compared to the work force of the employer, 803 F. Supp. at 1220-21, and that, [i]n a disparate treatment case, the statistical evidence must be `finely tuned' to compare the employer's relevant workforce with the qualified populations in the relevant labor market. Id. at 1221 (quoting Krodel v. Young, 748 F.2d 701, 709 (D.C. Cir. 1984)). However, we disagree with the district court's conclusion that the EEOC's statistical evidence fails to raise a claim of intentional discrimination. First, Dr. Straszheim's external availability methodology is sufficiently similar to that approved by the court in United States v. Pasadena Indep. Sch. Dist., 43 Fair Emp. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1319, 1987 WL 9919 (S.D. Tex. Apr. 18, 1987) (DeAnda, C.J.) (Pasadena I.S.D.), to beg the question why the court found it so lacking here. Second, the travel times which the district court found simply untenable, 803 F. Supp. at 1219, were confirmed by the census data, which was, in turn, legitimized by the actual applications received by Olson's. We do not understand how the district court can completely discount the possibility that prospective employees will travel further than a few blocks to work at Olson's when it was presented with evidence of hundreds 7 of applications from job seekers not residing in the immediate vicinity of an Olson's location. Third, Dr. Chorush's analysis, which the district court found persuasive, id., is fundamentally unsound. Dr. Chorush's analysis considers only a portion of Olson's work force at only one point in time, presuming that what was true for the Spring Branch stores in April 1990 must be true for all Olson's locations over the entire period under dispute. Dr. Chorush begins with the presumption that one can describe Olson's labor market by describing Olson's work force; thus, he concludes, since most of Olson's Spring Branch employees are white teenagers living a short distance from the store, then white teenagers living a short distance from the store constitute Olson's available labor force. This is wholly at odds with the fundamental premise of employment discrimination law. In order to test for discriminatory hiring, we evaluate an employer's work force in terms of the available labor pool, not the other way around. The fact that Olson's April 1990 Spring Branch work force was predominantly white teenagers living close to the store does not mean that there were not qualified applicants who were not white teenagers living close to the store. Finally, the district court's assessment of the EEOC's statistical evidence completely disregards the applicant flow analysis conducted by Dr. Straszheim. Dr. Chorush opin[ed] that Olson's could expect to draw its work force from a given area. Id. By contrast, Dr. Straszheim analyzed the actual 8 applications. The district court found, based upon Dr. Chorush's testimony, that [a]pplicants for employment [at Olson's] are therefore likely to be substantially different from those actually holding employment in the food preparation and service classification [of the Census]. Id. However, Olson's own applications indicate that blacks not living within the immediate vicinity of Olson's locations comprise a higher percentage of applicants than was suggested by Dr. Straszheim's census-based analysis. Guided by this circuit's previous admonition that the most direct route to proof of racial discrimination in hiring is proof of disparity between the percentage of blacks among those applying for a particular position and the percentage of blacks among those hired, Hester v. Southern Ry., 497 F.2d 1374, 1379 (5th Cir. 1974), we conclude that the district court clearly erred when it held, without fully considering the applicant flow analysis offered by the EEOC's expert, that the EEOC had failed to provide ample statistical evidence to establish a prima facie violation of Title VII.2 To the contrary, we find the record replete with evidence to establish such a violation.