Opinion ID: 676060
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Croson's Narrow Tailoring Requirement

Text: 113 Croson's second requirement is that the affirmative action provided be narrowly tailored to the discrimination to be remedied. This requirement, like the compelling interest requirement, applies to the present case through the interaction of Rufo and Croson. Rufo commands district courts to modify consent decrees to avoid perpetuat[ing] a constitutional violation. Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 748, 763, 116 L.Ed.2d 867 (1992). For its part, Croson establishes the controlling constitutional standard that cannot be violated. Taken together, these decisions mandate that the present decrees' affirmative action provisions be narrowly tailored to serve the compelling government interest of ending racial discrimination. City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 507, 109 S.Ct. 706, 728 (1989). The district court failed to make the modifications necessary to tailor the decrees narrowly to that interest. 114 A local government wishing to use racial preferences must strike a difficult balance between an admirable ambition to overcome this nation's sorry history of ... private and public discrimination, Croson, 488 U.S. at 499, 109 S.Ct. at 724, and the sometimes contrary goal of making race irrelevant to public decisionmaking. These related constitutional duties are not always harmonious; reconciling them requires public employers to act with extraordinary care. Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Educ., 476 U.S. 267, 277, 106 S.Ct. 1842, 1848, 90 L.Ed.2d 260 (1986) (plurality opinion). 115 Carefully tailored affirmative action programs can be a legitimate means of reconciling these aims, and  'innocent persons may be called upon to bear some of the burden of the remedy'  for past discrimination. Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. Federal Communications Comm'n, 497 U.S. 547, 596, 110 S.Ct. 2997, 3025-26, 111 L.Ed.2d 445 (1990) (quoting Wygant, 476 U.S. at 281, 106 S.Ct. at 1850 (opinion of Powell, J.)); accord Peightal v. Metropolitan Dade County, 940 F.2d 1394, 1410 (11th Cir.1991) (opinion of Brown, J.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 969, 117 L.Ed.2d 134 (1992). Croson itself noted that local governments may in some circumstances use affirmative action to eradicate the effects of public discrimination. Croson, 488 U.S. at 491-93, 109 S.Ct. at 720-21; accord Cone Corp. v. Hillsborough County, 908 F.2d 908, 916-17 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 983, 111 S.Ct. 516, 112 L.Ed.2d 528 (1990). To ensure that affirmative action programs do not go too far, however, they must be scrutinized strictly. In making this evaluation, we consider: (1) the 'necessity for the relief and the efficacy of alternative remedies' ; (2) the 'flexibility and duration of the relief, including the availability of waiver provisions' ; (3) the 'relationship of numerical goals to the relevant labor market' ; and (4) the 'impact of the relief on the rights of [innocent third parties].'  Howard v. McLucas, 871 F.2d 1000, 1008 (11th Cir.) (quoting United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 171, 107 S.Ct. 1053, 1066, 94 L.Ed.2d 203 (1987) (plurality opinion)), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1002, 110 S.Ct. 560, 107 L.Ed.2d 555 (1989). Special vigilance is required against unyielding racial quotas that rest[ ] upon the completely unrealistic assumption that minorities will choose a particular trade in lockstep proportion to their representation in the local population. Croson, 488 U.S. at 507, 109 S.Ct. at 729 (internal quote marks omitted). 116 Since Croson, this Court has twice rejected an equal protection challenge to government-sponsored racial preferences. In Howard v. McLucas, 871 F.2d at 1006, we applied strict scrutiny to a consent decree provision that reserved a certain number of promotions for blacks. The number of promotions reserved matched the number of promotions that had been lost by blacks due to past discrimination. Id. at 1003. The set aside was thus narrowly tailored to correct the precisely identified effects of past discrimination. 117 In Cone Corp., we upheld a minority business enterprise plan that had been carefully crafted to minimize the burden on innocent third parties. 908 F.2d at 910. Under this program, persons who bid for certain county contracts had to make a good-faith effort to subcontract a stated percentage of the job to minority businesses. Id. at 911. Although the program included a goal of twenty-five percent minority participation, the county would grant a waiver if qualified minority businesses were uninterested, unavailable, or significantly more expensive than non-minority businesses. Id. at 910-11. In the first year of the program's operation, the county had, after investigation, granted good-faith waivers to each of the bidders who had failed to reach the twenty-five percent target for minority participation. Id. at 911. Despite the plan's flexibility, the district court entered summary judgment against the county. This Court reversed, holding that the plan was sufficiently likely to pass constitutional muster to warrant a trial. Id. at 917. 118 The affirmative action provisions at issue in the present case lack both the extreme specificity of the Howard plan and the generous flexibility of the Cone Corp. plan. They are not narrowly tailored. Thus, the district court must re-write the decrees to make them narrowly tailored to the compelling interest they are intended to serve. 119 The decrees contain two sets of affirmative action provisions: long-term goals and annual goals. The long-term goals are intended to reflect the basic purpose of the decree; they are the final destination. As the long-term goals are reached, affirmative action ends. By contrast, the annual appointment goals are the means of getting to the long-term goals; they guide year-to-year personnel decisions. We will discuss the flaws in the long-term goals first, and then turn to the short-term goals. 120
121 As written, the long-term racial goals are fundamentally flawed. The flaw is that they are designed to create parity between the racial composition of the labor pool and the race of the employees in each job position. The Constitution does not guarantee racial parity in public employment; instead, it forbids racial discrimination. A public employment consent decree's race-conscious provisions are valid only to the extent that they promote the compelling government interest, anchored in the Constitution, of ending discrimination. We stressed in United States v. City of Miami, 2 F.3d 1497, 1506 (11th Cir.1993), that the intent of consent decrees like those in this case cannot be to maintain employment quotas. Instead, the proper goals of such a decree are to end discrimination and eliminate the effects of past discrimination. Id.; see also Brunet v. City of Columbus, 1 F.3d 390, 412 (6th Cir.1993) ( 'Title VII does not require employers to equalize the probabilities of hiring of the average members of two groups. Rather, it requires that actual individuals enjoy opportunities for employment free from discriminatory barriers.'  (quoting Brunet v. City of Columbus, 642 F.Supp. 1214, 1228 (S.D.Ohio 1986)). 122 By striving for racial parity rather than an end to racial discrimination, these decrees actually promote racial discrimination in contravention of the Constitution. Some might argue that an end to discrimination requires parity between the racial composition of the labor pool and the racial composition in each job position. The Supreme Court, however, has rejected that contention, because it rests upon the completely unrealistic assumption that minorities will choose a particular profession in lockstep proportion to their representation in the local workforce. Croson, 488 U.S. at 507, 109 S.Ct. at 729 (internal quotation marks omitted). 123 Conceding that the decrees' long-term racial parity goals violate Croson, the district court stated: There can be little doubt that the civilian labor force data would not pass muster under current legal standards as a valid measure of a discrimination-free job force for all city jobs .... Nevertheless, the district court believed that this admittedly inappropriate measure did not need to be altered because other modifications to the decrees would partly reduce[ ] any adverse consequences arising from use of labor force data, and because the long-term goals have proved in practice to be largely hortatory. Courts should not be satisfied with partly reducing the effects of unconstitutional aspects of their decrees. Instead, they must modify decrees to prevent them from operating unconstitutionally in whole or in part. 124 Moreover, the long-term goals play a significant role in the operation of this decree. These goals may not determine the annual level of appointments, but they serve more than a hortative function. As the district court explained, [t]heir primary effect has been to set a[n] expiration date for the annual goals. This role is significant because the Constitution demands that race-conscious affirmative action programs end as soon as their purposes are accomplished. Until the long-term goals are met, these goals maintain race-conscious selection procedures. Thus, it is important to ensure that the long-term goals pass muster under current legal standards as a valid measure of a discrimination-free job force. 125 On remand, the district court must re-write the decrees to reflect that their true long-term purpose is to remedy past and present discrimination, not to achieve work-force parity. The goal of eliminating discrimination may justify some interim use of affirmative action, but affirmative action selection provisions are themselves a form of discrimination that cannot continue forever. An end to racial discrimination demands the development of valid, non-discriminatory selection procedures to replace race-conscious selection procedures. We hesitate to label this essential object long-term, because it should be pursued with a sense of urgency. 126 While strict scrutiny does not require exhaustion of every possible ... alternative, it does require serious, good faith consideration of race-neutral alternatives, either prior to or in conjunction with implementation of an affirmative action plan. Coral Constr. Co. v. King County, 941 F.2d 910, 923 (9th Cir.1991), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 875, 116 L.Ed.2d 780 (1992); see also Cone Corp. v. Hillsborough County, 908 F.2d 908, 917 (11th Cir.) (upholding a minority set-aside program that implemented race-neutral alternatives in conjunction with, rather than prior to, racial preferences), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 983, 111 S.Ct. 516, 112 L.Ed.2d 528 (1990). [R]ace-neutral means are to be favored. Peightal v. Metropolitan Dade County, 26 F.3d 1545, 1557 (11th Cir.1994). Unfortunately, race-neutral alternatives have not been pursued diligently enough in this case. 127 True, the City and the Board have engaged in several race-neutral efforts to cure past and present discrimination. In the 1960s, the Board actively encouraged blacks to apply for jobs, and either waived or eliminated certain application fees. The consent decrees themselves required strengthened recruitment of blacks and women, eliminated certain time-in-grade and size requirements that may have hindered the promotion of blacks or women, and mandated education of supervisors in their responsibility to prevent discrimination against blacks and women. No party has alleged on appeal that these obligations have not been met. 128 However, the single most important race-neutral alternative contained in the decrees was the requirement that the Board develop and put in place non-discriminatory selection procedures--a requirement that the Board has not satisfied. The Board was quite properly ordered to implement selection procedures that either had no disparate impact on blacks and women or that, despite having disparate impact, were job related as that term is used in Title VII. Moreover, if the Board chose the second approach, adopting procedures that were job-related despite having some disparate impact, then the Board was required to search for selection procedures that were equally job-related but with less adverse impact. These decree provisions roughly parallel the requirements of Title VII, which mandates that an employer use either a selection procedure with no adverse impact or a job-related selection procedure that has no more adverse impact than other, equally job-related selection procedures. See Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 425, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 2375, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975). Although the decree ordered the Board to comply with Title VII by developing valid tests, it provided no deadlines or formal review mechanism to ensure that the Board actually did so. That omission turned out to be a serious flaw. 129 The development of valid selection procedures, in conjunction with the other race-neutral measures, would in time have ended race-conscious hiring. By minimizing and ultimately ending the need for racial preferences, implementation of race-neutral selection procedures would have gone far toward making sure that these decrees satisfied constitutional requirements. But little or no progress in this direction has been made. In 1991, the Board administered thirty-five different tests, none of which had been validated. Thirteen years after the consent decrees took effect, the Board is still unable or unwilling to demonstrate the legality of a single exam. 11 For its part, the City has never tried to validate the selection procedures it uses to choose from among qualified candidates; nor does the City decree presently require that it do so. Thirteen years of experience teach that the decrees as written are simply too weak to make the City and the Board develop non-discriminatory selection procedures. The district court should remedy this defect. The provisions requiring valid selection procedures must be given teeth and extended to cover the City, too. 130 Under its present decree, the Board may indefinitely administer racially discriminatory tests and then attempt to cure the resulting injury to blacks with race-conscious affirmative action. Federal courts should not tolerate such institutionalized discrimination. See Billish v. City of Chicago, 989 F.2d 890, 894 (7th Cir.1993) (en banc) ([A] public employer cannot be allowed to justify reverse discrimination by the bootstrap method of an alternating sequence of racial promotions (or hires). That is, the city cannot get points for first using a presumptively biased eligibility list to make a string of white promotions and then turning around and trying to do some rough racial justice by promoting two blacks from the bottom of the list.). Use of racial hiring quotas to mask the effects of discriminatory selection procedures places grievous burdens on blacks as well as whites. Whatever they measure, tests that are not job-related do not predict future job performance, yet they may nevertheless convince some persons that those who score lower are less qualified. As Justice Brennan once explained, even in the pursuit of remedial objectives, an explicit policy of assignment by race may serve to stimulate our society's latent race consciousness, suggesting the utility and propriety of basing decisions on a factor that ideally bears no relationship to an individual's worth or needs. United Jewish Orgs. v. Carey, 430 U.S. 144, 173, 97 S.Ct. 996, 1014, 51 L.Ed.2d 229 (1977) (Brennan, J., concurring in part). Blacks who do not make top marks on the flawed exams, but who nevertheless are appointed through affirmative action, may discover that their colleagues mistakenly consider them less able. Croson, 488 U.S. at 493, 109 S.Ct. at 722 (plurality opinion) (Classifications based on race carry a danger of stigmatic harm. Unless they are strictly reserved for remedial settings, they may in fact promote notions of racial inferiority and lead to a politics of racial hostility.); Hayes v. North State Law Enforcement Ass'n, 10 F.3d 207, 212 (4th Cir.1993) ( 'While the inequities and indignities visited by past discrimination are undeniable, the use of race as a reparational device risks perpetuating the very race-consciousness such a remedy purports to overcome.'  (quoting Maryland Troopers Ass'n v. Evans, 993 F.2d 1072, 1076 (4th Cir.1993))). For these reasons, it is not surprising that the class of black employees argued in the district court that a reasonable timetable for adoption of valid tests should be imposed. The failure of the consent decrees to force the City and the Board to develop race-neutral selection procedures that are fair to blacks and whites has caused both to suffer the effects of discrimination. 131 By permitting the continued use of discriminatory tests, the decrees compound the very evil they were designed to eliminate. The Constitution will not allow such a discriminatory construct. One color of discrimination has been painted over another in an effort to mask the peeling remnants of prejudice past, leaving a new and equally offensive discoloration rather than a clean canvas. The time has long passed for the Board and the City to strip away the past and adopt fresh, race-neutral selection procedures. And court-approved racial preferences must end as soon as possible. 132 The district court declined to set deadlines for the development of valid selection procedures. The court agreed that use of such testing procedures would be desirable, but nevertheless summarily decided that specific requirements for development and review [of lawful tests], particularly if accompanied by a judicially-imposed timetable, would be unrealistic, unworkable, and unwise. That decision was an abuse of discretion. 133 While it may be difficult to develop valid selection procedures, that task is far from impossible. Other public employment cases prove that it can be done. See, e.g., Hamer v. City of Atlanta, 872 F.2d 1521, 1532 (11th Cir.1989) (upholding the district court's finding that a written test used to determine promotions from firefighter to fire lieutenant was properly validated); Brunet v. City of Columbus, 1 F.3d 390, 411 (6th Cir.1993) (upholding use of professionally-developed firefighter exam); Bridgeport Guardians, Inc. v. City of Bridgeport, 933 F.2d 1140, 1148 (2d Cir.) (affirming the use of a job-related exam in conjunction with banding, a technique designed to reduce the test's disparate impact), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 337, 116 L.Ed.2d 277 (1991); Police Officers for Equal Rights v. City of Columbus, 916 F.2d 1092, 1101-02 (6th Cir.1990) (affirming a district court's finding that the challenged portion of a police lieutenant exam was job-related); Bernard v. Gulf Oil Corp., 890 F.2d 735, 746 (5th Cir.1989) (affirming the district court's determination that the tests Gulf used to determine which employees were eligible for promotion were job related, based upon the validation studies and expert testimony), cert. denied, 497 U.S. 1003, 110 S.Ct. 3237, 111 L.Ed.2d 748 (1990); Berkman v. City of New York, 812 F.2d 52, 59-60 (2d Cir.) (approving the district court's conclusion that physical examinations used by the city to select entry-level firefighters were valid), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 848, 108 S.Ct. 146, 98 L.Ed.2d 102 (1987); Clady v. County of Los Angeles, 770 F.2d 1421, 1430-32 (9th Cir.1985) (affirming the district court's conclusion that a written examination used by the county to hire firefighters was valid), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1109, 106 S.Ct. 1516, 89 L.Ed.2d 915 (1986); Rivera v. City of Wichita Falls, 665 F.2d 531, 538 (5th Cir. Unit A 1982) (affirming a district court finding that a police officer exam was job-related); Contreras v. City of Los Angeles, 656 F.2d 1267, 1281, 1284 (9th Cir.1981) (concluding that an auditor exam was job-related), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 1021, 102 S.Ct. 1719, 72 L.Ed.2d 140 (1982); United States v. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Dep't, D.Nev. (No. CV-S-84-809-RDF (LRL), June 11, 1991) (report and recommendation of magistrate judge) (finding a professionally-developed police officer exam to be lawful); cf. Guardians Ass'n v. Civil Serv. Comm'n, 630 F.2d 79, 103 (2d Cir.1980) (holding that an employer faces a substantial task in demonstrating the job-relatedness of a test, [b]ut the task is by no means impossible), cert. denied, 452 U.S. 940, 101 S.Ct. 3083, 69 L.Ed.2d 954 (1981); Craig v. County of Los Angeles, 626 F.2d 659, 664-66 (9th Cir.1980) (upholding the district court's determination that success on a written exam was predictive of success at the police academy, but remanding for a determination of whether success at the academy correlated to job performance), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 919, 101 S.Ct. 1364, 67 L.Ed.2d 345 (1981); United States v. City of San Francisco, 696 F.Supp. 1287, 1297 (N.D.Cal.1988) (approving a consent decree that set out a schedule of test-development deadlines), aff'd in part and modified in part on other grounds sub nom. Davis v. City of San Francisco, 890 F.2d 1438 (9th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 897, 111 S.Ct. 248, 112 L.Ed.2d 206 (1990). 134 Moreover, the conclusion that job selection procedures cannot be brought into compliance with Title VII necessarily implies that Congress set up a legal requirement that is impossible to meet. We are loath to impute such a gross error to our nation's elected representatives. Had Congress shared the district court's belief that validation of selection procedures was unrealistic, unworkable, and unwise, then Congress would not have made a specific exception to Title VII for the proper use of professionally designed tests. Guardians Ass'n v. Civil Serv. Comm'n, 630 F.2d 79, 89 (2d Cir.1980), cert. denied, 452 U.S. 940, 101 S.Ct. 3083, 69 L.Ed.2d 954 (1981). Valid tests may prove administratively burdensome to design and validate, but minimizing inconvenience is not a constitutional value. It certainly does not outweigh the importance of ending racial discrimination. See, e.g., Hayes v. North State Law Enforcement Ass'n, 10 F.3d 207, 216 (4th Cir.1993). As Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., has explained, [t]he Constitution does not put a price on constitutional rights, in terms either of time or money. The rights guaranteed by the Constitution are to be made effective in the present. Jack Bass, Taming the Storm 398 (1993) (quoting written statement made by Judge Johnson during confirmation proceedings regarding his appointment to the Court of Appeals). If the process of approving selection procedures places undue strain on the district court's resources, it may appoint a special master to assist with the task. 135 Our conclusion that the development of valid job-selection procedures is feasible is buttressed by the fact that, even while complaining about the burdens of test-development, the Board claims that approximately two-thirds of the thirty-five exams it administered in 1991 had no disparate impact on the passing rate of blacks. The Board does not purport to claim that its tests are sufficiently job-related to satisfy Title VII. But its alleged success at developing tests with no disparate impact puts us at a loss to understand the Board's refusal to subject even a single exam to judicial scrutiny and its vigorous opposition to any deadline for doing so. The Board's self-professed capacity for designing non-discriminatory tests belies its contention that test-development is too tricky for deadlines. 12 136 As Judge Clark recently noted for this Court, our experience teaches us that on some occasions public employers prefer the supervision of a federal court to confronting directly [their] employees and the public. United States v. City of Miami, 2 F.3d 1497, 1507 (11th Cir.1993). The Constitution was not designed to ease the lot of public officials, and it is not the role of federal courts to insulate public officials from the people. Instead, woven throughout the Constitution is a commitment to democratic self-rule, making public officials answerable to the people. While one of the most important duties of federal courts is to protect the constitutional and statutory rights of minorities, interference in the processes of another branch of government should be as narrow and short-lived as fulfilling that constitutional duty allows. Remedial decrees should require the responsible officials to end their unconstitutional action posthaste. Remedial decrees should not foster prolonged oversight and management by the least representative branch. Federal court supervision of local government has always been intended as a temporary measure and should  'not extend beyond the time required to remedy the effects of past intentional discrimination.'  Board of Educ. v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237, 248, 111 S.Ct. 630, 637, 112 L.Ed.2d 715 (1991) (school desegregation case) (quoting Spangler v. Pasadena City Bd. of Educ., 611 F.2d 1239, 1245 n. 5 (9th Cir.1979) (Kennedy, J., concurring)). 137 Valid selection procedures are both possible in practice and constitutionally necessary. Therefore, on remand, the district court should set prompt deadlines for the City and the Board to develop and implement valid job-selection procedures. 13 138
139 We now turn to a discussion of the decree's annual goals, which guide the year-to-year actions of the City and Board. Such annual hiring goals may serve the ultimate purpose of eliminating discrimination in two different ways. First, affirmative action may be needed to remedy present discrimination where less-suspect means are unavailable or inadequate. Second, hiring preferences may be essential to cure the lingering effects of past discrimination. We first consider the extent to which these two purposes justify continued use of the annual goals; we then discuss how the annual goals should be modified to make their interim use narrowly tailored. 140 Until valid job-selection procedures are in place, some use of racial preferences is necessary to counteract the ongoing effects of racially discriminatory testing. Were such race-conscious decisionmaking not allowed prior to the implementation of race-neutral selection devices, the City and the Board would find themselves in the impossible position of trying to comply with Title VII on the basis of discrimination-tainted procedures. The Wilks class implicitly conceded as much at the modification hearing, and argues on appeal only that supplemental affirmative action should be disallowed in the absence of a firm schedule for adoption of lawful tests. We have already decided that adoption of such a schedule is necessary. Therefore, pending prompt implementation of valid selection procedures, the Board may continue to make race-conscious certifications to the City and the City may continue to take race into account when hiring and promoting. We will discuss later the character of race-conscious decisionmaking that is permitted. 141 In addition, even after valid selection procedures are in place, affirmative action may be needed to cure past discrimination by the City and the Board. However, we refuse simply to assume that the effects of past discrimination in public employment have endured or will endure indefinitely. For the past thirteen years, the decrees have mandated that the City and Board affirmatively hire blacks as a remedy for past wrongs. This court-approved remedy has apparently had substantial impact. 142 On remand, the district court must determine from evidence whether the effects of past City and Board discrimination persist. As long as significant specified effects linger, affirmative action may be justified despite the implementation of valid selection procedures. Public employers cannot escape their constitutional responsibilities merely by adopting facially-neutral policies that institutionalize the effects of prior discrimination and thus perpetuate de facto discrimination. See United States v. Fordice, --- U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 112 S.Ct. 2727, 2735-36, 120 L.Ed.2d 575 (1992) (school desegregation case). Here, however, it is not at all clear that broad affirmative action is still needed to cure past discrimination by the City and the Board. After thirteen years of racial preferences--and even longer with respect to firefighters and police officers--the district court should consider the retrospective, remedial purpose of affirmative action satisfied except where it finds that past discrimination continues to taint a particular position. Absent such findings, and once valid selection procedures have been adopted, affirmative action will no longer be legitimate; the goals of rectifying past and present discrimination will have been achieved. 143 Having discussed the circumstances in which the City and the Board may continue to use annual affirmative action goals, we now discuss the form that any further affirmative action must take. Affirmative action, when allowed, must be flexible, reasonably related to the pool of qualified minorities, and impose no undue burden on innocents. See Howard v. McLucas, 871 F.2d 1000, 1008 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1002, 110 S.Ct. 560, 107 L.Ed.2d 555 (1989). As presently written, the City and Board decrees' affirmative action provisions do not satisfy these requirements. 144 The present annual goals for blacks lack flexibility. These goals have been set, apparently arbitrarily, at figures ranging from twenty-five to fifty percent, depending on the position. We might allow such fixed-percentage goals, under the theory that they represented an estimate of the speed with which past discrimination could be eradicated, if they were in fact treated as goals rather than absolute commandments. The Cone Corp. Court, for example, upheld a plan that set a goal of twenty-five percent minority participation because the county granted waivers whenever that goal could not be achieved. Cone Corp. v. Hillsborough County, 908 F.2d 908, 916-17 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 983, 111 S.Ct. 516, 112 L.Ed.2d 528 (1990). Here, by contrast, the annual appointment goals have been applied as rigid quotas. In the early 1980s, the City mechanically appointed equal numbers of blacks and whites to fire department positions without any consideration of relative qualifications in order to meet the stated fifty-percent goal. In 1989, the City promoted to fire lieutenant seven blacks previously found by a City review board to be unqualified--despite the competing candidacy of several whites found by the review panel to be more qualified. The City apparently viewed its annual fifty-percent goal as mandatory, and believed that if it did not promote blacks and whites in approximately equal numbers, then it could make no appointments at all. As implemented, these goals lack the flexibility that the Constitution requires. 145 Despite its rigid application of the annual goals, the City contends that two provisions in its decree create sufficient flexibility to satisfy strict scrutiny. The City chiefly relies on paragraph two of its decree, which provides: 146 Nothing herein shall be interpreted as requiring the City to hire unnecessary personnel, or to hire, transfer, or promote a person who is not qualified, or to hire, transfer or promote a less qualified person, in preference to a person who is demonstrably better qualified based upon the results of a job-related selection procedure. 147 According to the City, this paragraph allows the City to adjust its goals when there is an insufficient pool of qualified black applicants. 148 We find the City's interpretation unpersuasive. On its own terms, paragraph two does not permit departure from the goals unless and until the Board develops a job-related selection procedure--i.e., a test that can accurately determine the relative qualifications of candidates. See In re Birmingham Reverse Discrimination Employment Litig., 833 F.2d 1492, 1497 (11th Cir.1987) (discussing the district court's understanding that paragraph two does not apply until validated exams are in place), aff'd sub nom., Martin v. Wilks, 490 U.S. 755, 109 S.Ct. 2180, 104 L.Ed.2d 835 (1989). While paragraph two may underscore the need for valid selection procedures, absent such procedures it does not help the City survive strict scrutiny. 149 The City also suggests that paragraph five of its decree infuses significant flexibility into the City's hiring and promotion goals. That paragraph provides, in relevant part: 150 The parties also preserve the right to adjust, through agreement and subject to the approval of the Court, any of the goals provided by this Decree where it can be shown that a professional degree, license or certificate is required to perform the duties of any particular job or jobs in the City's workforce and that blacks and/or women hold such degrees, licenses or certificates in percentage terms which are inconsistent with the goals provided. 151 This clause mitigates the rigidity of the City decree's goals in some situations, but it does not go far enough. First, while paragraph five allows the City to take account of the unavailability of sufficient blacks with degrees and licenses, it imposes no duty to do so. The requirement of narrow tailoring is obligatory, not permissive. Second, the clause focuses only on degrees, licenses, and certificates. Such an unnecessarily limited scope is improper. When determining the proportion of blacks in the qualified labor pool, the City and Board should also take into account other objective prerequisites for employment, such as age or experience requirements, for which data is reasonably available. Where the City always makes promotions to a particular senior position from among individuals holding a particular junior position, the relative proportion of blacks in the junior position will generally be the most significant determinant of the proportion of blacks in the qualified applicant pool. Finally, paragraph five of the City decree applies only to the City, not to the Board. 152 Thus, in their present form, the annual goals are unconstitutionally unrefined. On remand, the district court must re-write the decrees to make clear that the annual goals cannot last indefinitely. Once a valid selection procedure is in place for a particular position, neither the City nor the Board may continue to certify, hire, or promote according to a race-conscious goal absent proof of ongoing racial discrimination, or of the lingering effects of past racial discrimination, with respect to that position. Under no circumstances may the City hire or promote, or the Board certify, candidates who are demonstrably less qualified than other candidates, based upon the results of valid, job-related selection procedures, unless the district court finds that such appointments are necessary to cure employment discrimination by the City or Board. 153 In addition, the district court must re-write the decrees to relate the annual goals to the proportion of blacks in the relevant, objectively-qualified labor pool, calculated with reasonably available data. The district court may set an annual affirmative action goal that is greater than the proportion of blacks in the qualified labor pool if the district court finds that unlawful employment discrimination by the City or Board has reduced the proportion of blacks either in the qualified pool or in the position itself. In such circumstances, the district court may set a flexible goal that does not unduly burden the interests of innocent third parties and that is reasonably related to the pool of qualified blacks. See, e.g., Cone Corp. v. Hillsborough County, 908 F.2d 908, 916-17 (11th Cir.1990) (approving a flexible affirmative action goal set at approximately twice the proportion of minorities in the qualified pool); Howard v. McLucas, 871 F.2d 1000, 1008 (11th Cir.) (approving a flexible, 50% affirmative action goal in order expeditious[ly] to remedy the identified effects of unlawful discrimination), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1002, 110 S.Ct. 560, 107 L.Ed.2d 555 (1989); cf. In re Birmingham Reverse Discrimination Employment Litig., 20 F.3d 1525, 1542-43 (11th Cir.1994) (suggesting that affirmative action goals must be flexible and tied in some reasonable manner to the proportion of blacks in the qualified pool). Appropriately designed, such increased goals may hasten the end to judicial oversight by expeditiously remedying past discrimination. 154 The Constitution tolerates race-based remedies only when they are necessary either to remedy past discrimination or to correct present discrimination until valid selection procedures are in place. Affirmative action is at most a temporary treatment; a cure for discrimination requires more fundamental and more even-handed reform. We cannot allow stop-gap remedies to turn into permanent palliatives. Therefore, the district court is directed to order the City and the Board to develop race-neutral selection procedures forthwith, not at the casual pace the Board has passed off as progress for thirteen years. The Board's decree is not a security blanket to be clung to, but a badge of shame, a monument to the Board's past and present failure to treat all candidates in a fair and non-discriminatory manner. Federal judicial oversight should provide public employers no refuge from their responsibilities. We are confident that, on remand, the district court will modify and enforce the decrees in a way that will bring that truth home. 155