Opinion ID: 501743
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Past Discrimination

Text: 82 The EEOC contends that the court erred in not mentioning hiring data for 1972 because, although it was before the liability period began, it would constitute evidence of past discrimination. The EEOC cites Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385, 106 S.Ct. 3000, 3010, 92 L.Ed.2d 315 (1986), in which the Supreme Court stated that  '[p]roof that an employer engaged in racial discrimination prior to the effective date of Title VII might in some circumstances support the inference that such discrimination continued, particularly where relevant aspects of the decisionmaking process had undergone little change.'  (quoting Hazelwood School District v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 309-10 n. 15, 97 S.Ct. 2736, 2742-43 n. 15, 53 L.Ed.2d 768 (1977)). 83 The EEOC cannot prevail with this argument, however, because based on the district court's findings, which we have held are not clearly erroneous, it has not proved that Sears discriminated against women in hiring in 1972. The EEOC cites various statistics that are products of the same analyses we have described above, and argues that they show discrimination. These analyses, however, are subject to the same defects the district court found fatal to the statistics of later years. Furthermore, these statistics may likely be even less reliable than those of the later years. The EEOC's expert Siskin testified that these 1972 figures were at best an estimate. Because we cannot say that these statistics provide proof of past discrimination, we need not determine whether the statistics support an inference of later discrimination.