Opinion ID: 2470930
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ricci

Text: The Supreme Court's recent decision in Ricci indicates that not all voluntary race- or gender-conscious employer action is properly analyzed under Weber and Johnson. In Ricci, the City of New Haven administered a promotional examination for its firefighters. The results yielded a significant racial disparity: according to the promotion rules and by virtue of the test scores, all ten individuals eligible for the then-existing lieutenant vacancies were white; and of the nine individuals eligible for the then-existing captain vacancies, two were Hispanic and seven were white. See 129 S.Ct. at 2666. Because of this racial disparity and, allegedly, because of fear of a disparate-impact lawsuit from black firefighters, the New Haven Civil Service Board did not certify the test results. Id. at 2667-71. A group of white firefighters then sued under § 703(a) for disparate treatment. The Supreme Court, correctly, described New Haven's decision as a race-based action. Id. at 2674. But, even though the Court was addressing a § 703(a) reverse-discrimination suit attacking a voluntary, private race-based action, the majority opinion did not cite Weber or Johnson. Nor did the Court apply the manifest imbalance and unnecessary trammeling factors. Instead, the Court adopted a strong basis in evidence standard: under Title VII, before an employer can engage in intentional discrimination for the asserted purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional disparate impact, the employer must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action. Id. at 2677. Ricci thus makes clear that at least some race- or sex-conscious voluntary employer actions are not subject to the affirmative action analysis of Weber and Johnson. [40] See id. at 2700 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (This litigation does not involve affirmative action.). Before Ricci, this Court had held, relying on Weber, that a showing of a prima facie case of employment discrimination through a statistical demonstration of disproportionate racial impact constitutes a sufficiently serious claim of discrimination to serve as a predicate for employer-initiated, voluntary race-conscious remedies. Bushey v. N.Y. State Civil Serv. Comm'n, 733 F.2d 220, 228 (2d Cir.1984) (footnote omitted). Based on that reasoning, we upheld, against a § 703 reverse-discrimination challenge, a public employer's adjustment of promotional examination scores for prison employees, in order to avoid a disparate impact on minority officers. Id. at 227-28. After Ricci, however, the position taken in Bushey is no longer tenable. A prima facie case of disparate impact is not, post- Ricci, an adequate factual predicate for all types of race- or gender-conscious employer actions. At least some race- or gender-conscious actions, such as the rejection of test scores because of their racial distribution, are not affirmative action and therefore cannot be supported by a mere manifest imbalance, or even by a prima facie case of disparate impact.