Opinion ID: 508923
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: validation

Text: 39 Upon demonstration by a plaintiff of a prima facie case of employment discrimination in violation of Title VII's prohibition of selection devices which adversely impact a protected minority, the defendant has an opportunity to demonstrate that the selection device has a manifest relationship to the employment in question. Connecticut v. Teal, supra, 457 U.S. at 446-47, 102 S.Ct. at 2530 (1982) (quoting Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 432, 91 S.Ct. 849, 854, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971)). Put another way, the employer may demonstrate that the selection device is valid. Despite its conclusion that no prima facie case had been made out, the district court proceeded to make an exhaustive investigation of the Engineer Training Program, and concluded that Conrail has proved the business necessity of its program. Cox v. Conrail, supra, slip op. at 104 (p 40). There was no dispute in this case that the instruction and examinations which constituted Phases I and II, the only phases which parties to this litigation failed, were wholly job related. Instead of attacking that finding, the appellants attack the fact that no validation study was performed for the Training Program as a whole. Their position in this Court is that the entire program as opposed to its component parts (individual tests), must be shown to be job-related and required by business necessity. 40 In essence, this case presents the inverse of the problem addressed by the Supreme Court in Connecticut v. Teal, 457 U.S. 440, 102 S.Ct. 2525, 73 L.Ed.2d 130 (1982). In that case, the Court held that where a particular portion of a selection device has an adverse impact on a minority group, the fact that the entire device has no overall adverse impact does not prevent the employees from establishing a prima facie case, nor does it provide the employer with a defense to such a case. Id. at 442, 102 S.Ct. at 2528. Title VII does not permit the victim of a facially discriminatory policy to be told that he has not been wronged because other persons of his or her race or sex were hired, the Court explained. Id. at 455, 102 S.Ct. at 2535. The Court therefore rejected the notion that a neutral bottom line is a defense to a discriminatory component of a selection device. Here, in contrast, the appellants do not and cannot attack the district court's amply supported findings with respect to any given component of the selection device; instead, they assert that the district court should have required Conrail to validate the Engineer Training Program as a whole. 41 The analysis in Teal, rejecting the argument that a separable component that has an adverse impact may be insulated from scrutiny where the selection device as a whole is numerically non-discriminatory, does not speak to the issue of whether assessment of the validity of the selection device as a whole is required. The argument presented and rejected in Teal was only that a good bottom line could protect an admittedly discriminatory component. Teal did not speak to the method of assessing a discriminatory selection device. 42 Like the Fifth Circuit in Rivera v. City of Wichita Falls, 665 F.2d 531, 539 (5th Cir.1982), we decline the invitation to require validation of an entire selection device in every litigation in which a prima facie case has been made out as to a single, separable component. Such a requirement would place an unreasonable burden upon district courts deciding adverse impact cases without adding any real substantive protection for the allegedly aggrieved parties in those cases. The purpose of Title VII is to ensure that individuals are not denied employment opportunities on the basis of a prohibited discrimination. See Connecticut v. Teal, supra, 457 U.S. at 453, 102 S.Ct. at 2533. If a separable component of a selection device cannot be shown to have an adverse impact upon members of a protected minority, the degree of job relatedness of that component will generally be irrelevant. 43 In this case, the district court addressed the job relatedness of the Engineer Training Program in spite of its finding that no prima facie case had been made out. Where possible, the district courts should retain the flexibility to address only those components of selection devices that are implicated by a prima facie case on the part of the plaintiffs. 44 There are, of course, circumstances which will prevent district courts from neatly sorting out and isolating each of a selection device's component elements in order to assess its validity. For example, where two or more components interact to cause an adverse impact, validation of the separate components may not suffice to validate the selection device. See Griffin v. Carlin, 755 F.2d 1516, 1524-25 ((11th Cir.1985) (citing Gilbert v. City of Little Rock, Ark., 722 F.2d 1390, 1396-98 (8th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 466 U.S. 972, 104 S.Ct. 2347, 80 L.Ed.2d 820 (1984)). Similarly, some components of a selection device may be so subjective that seriatim validation will be impossible. Ibid. In this case, the component phases of the Engineer Training Program were all easily separable and no allegation that they interact in a discriminatory way was made or supported. The district court also found that the risk of promotions being affected by subjective criteria in this case was minimal. In addition, the district court did in fact review the Training Program as a whole, without the benefit of a formal validity analysis of the entire program (only Phases I and II were assessed), and its finding that the entire Program was intimately related to the necessities of the very exacting and dangerous work task performed by Conrail's engineers was supported in the record despite the lack of such a study. That aspect of the district court's decision holding the Engineer Training Program valid is therefore affirmed.