Opinion ID: 764768
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Absence of Discriminatory Intent and Effect

Text: 27 As appellants fail to establish an equal protection violation under the first two theories, we agree with the district court's conclusion that in order to survive Rules 12(b)(6) and 12(c), appellants must sufficiently allege that the Nassau County defendants harbored a discriminatory intent against them and that the entrance examination disproportionately impacted them. We find that appellants fail to put forth any claims which would demonstrate either discriminatory intent or discriminatory impact. 28
29 Appellants' brief contends that, by designing the entrance exam so as to lessen the adverse impact on minority applicants, Nassau County intended to treat candidates differently on the basis of their race or ethnicity. This, they charge, amounts to intentional discrimination. Appellants further allege that this is a very subtle and insidious type of discrimination because it was done to avoid the weaknesses of candidates belonging to favored racial or ethnic groups. (Appellants' Br. at 17). 30 We determine that appellants' claims do not sufficiently allege that Nassau County harbored an intent to discriminate against them. Discriminatory purpose implies that the decisionmaker ... selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at least in part 'because of,' not merely 'in spite of,' its adverse effects upon an identifiable group. Personnel Administrator v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 279, 99 S.Ct. 2282, 2296, 60 L.Ed.2d 870 (1979) (emphasis added). Discriminatory intent or purpose typically refers to those instances when a government actor seeks to disadvantage or negatively impact a group of persons. See, e.g., Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 245-46, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 2050-51, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976) (concluding that purposeful discrimination was not present in a police officers' examination designed simply to test the level of an applicant's verbal skills even though black candidates suffered disproportionate adverse effects); Arlington Heights, 429 U.S. at 268-71, 97 S.Ct. at 565-66 (finding that, although the ultimate effect of a policy was discriminatory, there was no intent to discriminate when the record aptly demonstrated the decision was motivated by zoning, not racial, concerns); Adarand, 515 U.S. at 230, 115 S.Ct. at 2114 (an individual suffers an injury when he or she is disadvantaged by the government because of his or her race ....) (emphasis added). 31 Despite appellants' inflammatory suggestion that the exam was designed to avoid the weaknesses of a favored racial group, their sole allegation, at its simplest, is that designing the police officers' entrance exam to mitigate the negative impact on minority candidates (thereby improving their chances for selection) is akin to an intent to discriminate against appellants. This allegation is wholly insufficient to state a claim that the County intended to discriminate against appellants because it does not demonstrate that the County designed the 1994 exam because of some desire to adversely affect appellants. See Feeney, 442 U.S. at 279, 99 S.Ct. at 2296. Nothing suggests that the County sought to disadvantage appellants, or that the County was propelled by sinister or invidious motivations. A desire to reduce the adverse impact on black applicants and rectify hiring practices which the County admitted in the 1982 consent order might support an inference of discrimination is not analogous to an intent to discriminate against non-minority candidates. As the district court so aptly phrased it: where an exam that discriminates against a group or groups of persons is reviewed, studied and changed in order to eliminate, or at the very least, alleviate such discrimination, there is a complete absence of intentional discrimination. 32 Appellants' position would have us equate the County's desire to eliminate the discriminatory impact of its hiring practices on minority applicants with an intent to discriminate against Appellants. To so find could seriously stifle attempts to remedy discrimination. If employers or governmental entities fear that they will be charged with discriminating against non-minorities, they will shy away from all proper efforts to rectify prior discrimination. 33 The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination against minority groups in this country is an unfortunate reality, and government is not disqualified from acting in response to it [within, of course, constitutional parameters]. Adarand, 515 U.S. at 237, 115 S.Ct. at 2117; see also Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 482, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 2777, 65 L.Ed.2d 902 (1980) (As a threshold matter, we reject the contention that in the remedial context the Congress must act in a wholly 'color-blind' fashion.), overruled on other grounds Adarand, 515 U.S. at 200, 115 S.Ct. at 2097. In fact, where there is evidence of past discrimination, it is entirely within constitutional parameters to undertake efforts to remedy the effect of the prior, illegitimate practices, including, in extreme cases, the use of narrowly tailored racial (or gender) preferences. See Croson, 488 U.S. at 509, 109 S.Ct. at 730. Even in the absence of specific and identified discrimination, nothing in our jurisprudence precludes the use of race-neutral means to improve racial and gender representation. See id. at 509-10, 109 S.Ct. at 730. 34 In sum, appellants' allegations are insufficient to establish that Nassau County acted because of a desire to adversely affect appellants. The Nassau County defendants sought to design a police officers' exam which would reduce or eliminate the prior exams' adverse impact on black candidates. The 1994 exam was administered to all of the 25,000 candidates in identical fashion, regardless of race. The test was scored the same for all candidates, and no differential cutoffs were used. We conclude that the intent to remedy the disparate impact of the prior exams is not equivalent to an intent to discriminate against non-minority applicants. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's determination that appellants can prove no set of facts which would state a claim for intentional discrimination. 35
36 Appellants submitted during oral arguments that they were prejudiced because the 1994 exam did not include any of the cognitive sections which had been administered to the applicants. They argue that they would have performed better had those cognitive sections been included. We find that appellants fail to set forth allegations which would support a claim that they were adversely impacted by the redesign of the police officers' entrance exam. 37 Appellants certainly suffered no discriminatory impact in the administration or scoring of the facially neutral examination. On the contrary, even though the redesigned 1994 exam decreased the adverse impact on black applicants, noticeable adverse effects remained. Appellants concede that, on average, they scored higher than black applicants on the 1994 exam. Although appellants may have performed even better had the 1994 exam included cognitive sections, we fail to see how they can establish a claim for prejudice in light of this concession. 38 Although not binding on this court, we find the Tenth Circuit's ruling in a similar case extremely persuasive. In Byers v. City of Albuquerque, 150 F.3d 1271 (10th Cir.1998), the Tenth Circuit found that a police department did not discriminate against those appellants, several white police officers, in its promotional process. The alleged discriminatory action was the lowering of the written test score needed to proceed to the next round of the selection process by one point. See id. at 1276. That Circuit held that since the qualifying score was lowered for all applicants, regardless of race, the plaintiffs were neither excluded from full consideration because of their race, nor were they disadvantaged because of their race. See id. As such, the court concluded that those plaintiffs failed to show that they were harmed by the score adjustment. See id. 39 Byers directly bears on this case, where all of the applicants to the Nassau County Police Department were given the same test and were scored in the same manner. Like the Byers plaintiffs, appellants before us have not been excluded from full consideration because of their race or gender. If appellants continued to score higher than black candidates, on average, the exam did not impair or disadvantage these appellants in favor of African-American applicants. Thus, appellants are unable to set forth a claim that they endured any disparate impact as a result of the design and administration of the 1994 examination.