Opinion ID: 676060
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Annual Goals

Text: 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