Opinion ID: 3204484
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Officers' Alternatives

Text: So, the pivotal question on appellate review is whether the evidence compelled a finding that the employer refuse[d] to adopt an available alternative employment practice that has less disparate impact and serves the employer's legitimate needs. Id. To carry this burden, plaintiffs must demonstrate a viable alternative and give the employer an opportunity to adopt it. Allen v. City of Chicago, 351 F.3d 306, 313 (7th Cir. 2003). Outtz explained that he thought the Officers would be unlikely to carry this burden due to the very large number of applicants for relatively few open positions in Boston. On the 2008 exam, for example, where the disparate impact was much greater than in 2005, there were only 26 openings for 504 applicants. He explained that his experience is that: [I]n dealing with adverse impact[,] the ball game is played, for the most part, in terms of selection ratio. If I come to--if an employer - 37 - comes to me and says, Look, I've got five job openings and I've got 5,000 people that are applying for those five jobs and I want you to develop a system that reduces adverse impact, I'm just going home. The Officers' own expert agreed that the selection ratio heavily influenced the menu of available options, offering his opinion that the degree of adverse impact caused by a selection process depends so much on how many people you appoint. The Officers baldly assert that the district court did not find that Plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of putting forward a specific less discriminatory alternative. In fact, the district court precisely so found--twice. Lopez, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124139, at  (holding that the Officers' showing was not enough to carry their burden on this issue and did not demonstrat[e] by the evidence that there was an alternative employment practice with equal validity and less adverse impact that was available and that BPD refused to adopt). The Officers also contend that [i]t is undisputed that . . . adding test components such as an assessment center, structured oral interview, or performance review to an exam process increases the validity of an exam while having less adverse impact on minorities. Yet the Officers failed to offer any evidence that would have compelled the district court to find that the deployment of any of these supposedly undisputed solutions would have led to a smaller racial disparity in outcomes, Jones, 752 - 38 - F.3d at 55, given the selection ratios facing authorities in Boston. Our own review of the record does disclose testimony convincingly establishing that, as a general matter, incorporation of selection tools such as use of hurdles, banding, oral interviews, so-called assessment centers, and open ended situational judgment questions generally tend to result in less adverse impact than does a reliance on multiple choice exams. What is missing, though, is any rebuttal to Outtz's opinion that the low rates of job openings in the Boston sergeant ranks relative to the number of applicants made it unlikely that any alternative selection device would have materially reduced adverse impact in 2005 and 2008. The Officers did offer evidence that the mean differentials on the oral portion of an exam Boston used in 2002 were less than the mean differentials on the written portions of that exam. But the 2002 exam as a whole still had substantially the same adverse impact as did the exams administered in 2005 and 2008.14 And, again, the Officers provide no analysis of the effect of the selection ratios in 2005 and 2008. Additionally, as the district court noted, Boston's prior attempt to employ assessment centers with situational 14 The adverse promotional impact ratio in 2002 was calculated to be .32. In 2005, it was .28. - 39 - exercises and oral questioning in its 2002 promotional exam resulted in a cost of $1.2 million to develop the exam and the required transporting, housing, and training a substantial number of police officers from throughout the country who acted as the assessors, id. at , without generating any convincing support that repeating such an approach in 2005 or 2008 would have reduced adverse impact, id. at . In concluding that the City was not required to again incur such costs without any demonstration that adverse impact would be materially reduced, the district court acted well within its discretion in making the judgments called for by the applicable law.15 See Watson, 487 U.S. at 998 (opinion of O'Connor, J.) (Factors such as the cost or other burdens of proposed alternative selection devices are relevant in determining whether they would be equally as effective as the challenged practice in serving the employer's legitimate business goals.). Satisfying a plaintiff's burden on this point at trial demands evidence that plaintiffs' preferred alternative would have improved upon the challenged practice, Johnson, 770 F.3d at 477, not just that such practices exist in the abstract. 15 Boston had previously tried other tactics to reduce adverse impact. In 1992 and 2002 Boston experimented by integrating an assessment center component into the exam. After the 1992 exam, the City used its bypass authority to promote several Black candidates over Caucasian candidates in order to achieve compliance with a consent decree and the Guidelines. They were sued and the bypasses were reversed. See Abban, 748 N.E.2d 455. - 40 - Furthermore, securing the reversal of a trial court's factual finding that the Officers' proof on this point was not persuasive required evidence that is so compelling as to render its rejection clear error. The Officers' scattershot listing of alternatives without any developed rejoinder to Outtz's testimony concerning the challenge posed by the selection ratios in 2005 and 2008 fell short of this mark.16