Opinion ID: 676060
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Long-Term Goals

Text: 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