Opinion ID: 797056
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Applying the Defense to Criminal Conviction Policies

Text: 32 Prior decisions on business necessity do not directly control here. The standards set out in Griggs and its progeny (including the standards noted by our Court in Lanning I and II ) do not parallel the facts of this case. In the cases cited above, the hiring policies at issue were tests designed or used—at least allegedly—to measure an employee's ability to perform the relevant jobs. Here, however, the hiring policy has nothing to do with the applicant's ability to drive a paratransit bus; rather, it seeks to exclude applicants who, while able to drive a bus, pose too much of a risk of potential harm to the passengers to be trusted with the job. Thus, our standard of minimum qualifications necessary for successful performance of the job in question is appropriate in test-score cases, but awkward here because successful performance of the job in the usual sense is not at issue. See Lanning I, 181 F.3d at 482. SEPTA could argue that successful performance of the job includes not attacking a passenger and, therefore, that the standard is still appropriate. However, the standard is worded to address ability, not risk. Yet, the issue before us is the risk that the employee will harm a passenger, and the phrase minimum qualification simply does not fit, as it is hard to articulate the minimum qualification for posing a low risk of attacking someone. 33 The only reported appellate level case to address squarely the issue of exclusions from eligibility on the basis of prior convictions is Green v. Missouri Pac. R.R. Co., 523 F.2d 1290 (8th Cir.1975). There the employer refused to hire anyone for any position who had been convicted of any offense other than a minor traffic violation. Id. at 1292. Green had applied for an office job, and he was not considered because of a previous conviction for refusing to answer the draft (after failing to qualify as a conscientious objector). Id. at 1292-93. The Court held that the employer's policy was too broad to be justified by business necessity. Id. at 1298-99. 34 Green, however, presented materially different facts than those before us in two respects. First, the job in Green was an office job at a corporate headquarters; it did not require the employee to be alone with and in close proximity to vulnerable members of society. The public safety concern is of more moment in our case. Second, the hiring policy in Green prevented hiring a person with any criminal conviction, no matter how remote, insubstantial, or unrelated to [the] applicant's personal qualifications as an employee. Id. at 1296 (quoting McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 806, 93 S.Ct. 1817). Here, SEPTA's policy only prevents consideration of people with certain types of convictions—those that it argues have the highest and most unpredictable rates of recidivism and thus present the greatest danger to its passengers. In this context, Green was an easier case insofar as the Supreme Court has held firmly that an employer with an extremely broad exclusionary policy that fails to offer any empirical justification for it is unable to make out a successful business necessity defense, Dothard, 433 U.S. at 334, 97 S.Ct. 2720, whereas SEPTA has a narrower policy for a position in which criminal convictions are more job-related. 35 The EEOC has spoken to the issue in its Compliance Manual, which states that an applicant may be disqualified from a job on the basis of a previous conviction only if the employer takes into account: 36 1. The nature and gravity of the offense or offenses; 37 2. The time that has passed since the conviction and/or completion of the sentence; and 38