Opinion ID: 2470930
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Government's Investigation and Lawsuit

Text: The U.S. Department of Justice began to investigate possible discrimination in the hiring of permanent Custodians and CEs in the early 1990s. A 1993 demographic survey revealed that more than 99% of the permanent Custodian and CE workforce was male, and 92% was white. In contrast, blacks constituted about 20% of the qualified labor pool for these positions, Hispanics made up about 19% and women about 8% of the pool. A 1996 demographic survey showed similar results. It also appeared (as was later confirmed by the investigation) that racial minorities and women were much more likely to be hired as provisional Custodians or CEs than as permanent Custodians or CEs, even though the qualifications for both were the same. [20] These data aroused the Government's suspicion that something in the permanent hiring process was discriminatory. Based on a statistical analysis of the results of the investigation, the Government sued the City Defendants on January 30, 1996. The Government originally made both pattern-and-practice claims (which require proof of intentional discrimination) and disparate-impact claims. But it ultimately pursued only the disparate-impact claims. Two sets of these were asserted. In the first, the Government alleged that some of the tests employed brought about discriminatory results. Specifically, the claim was that Exams 5040, 8206 and 1074 had a disparate impact on blacks and Hispanics. This allegation was based on a report from two statisticians, who concluded that the statistical significance of the disparities in passage rates between white, black, and Hispanic takers of those three exams [21] was overwhelmingit ranged from 2 to nearly 14 standard deviations. See NYC Board III, 448 F.Supp.2d at 407. The second set of claims, the recruiting claims, alleged that the City Defendants' recruiting practices had a disparate impact on blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and women. In support of these claims, the Government produced a report by Dr. Orley Ashenfelter, a labor economist. The report said that the number of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and women who took each of the three disputed exams was lower than the number that would be expected based on the representation of qualified individuals in the overall labor pool. Dr. Ashenfelter found that the differences were statistically significant at the 5% level, and for some groups the probability that the differences were the result of chance was much lower. Although Dr. Ashenfelter did not offer any opinion as to the cause for these disparities, the Government asserted that they resulted from limited advertising and word-of-mouth referrals that had a disparate impact on women and minorities.