Opinion ID: 389939
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Liability for Post-Title VII Hiring Based on the 1971 Exam

Text: 63 Defendants contend that the City cannot be held liable for any hiring pursuant to the list generated by its 1971 firefighters exam because that exam predated the applicability of Title VII to the City, and because its hiring from the 1971 exam was therefore pursuant to a bona fide merit system, which is made lawful by § 703(h) of the Act. Neither precedent nor reason supports these contentions. 64 Section 703(a) of the Act makes unlawful an employer's failure or refusal to hire an individual on the basis of race. When it was enacted in 1964, this provision did not apply to municipalities. The provision became applicable to the City on March 24, 1972, by the passage of Pub.L. 92-261, § 2(1), 86 Stat. 103, which simply broadened the definitional provisions so as to make Title VII applicable to municipalities and certain other entities not previously covered. Nothing in the broadened definition suggested that a continued application of past discriminatory standards was permissible; clearly the intention was to the contrary. Thus, in Guardians Association v. Civil Service Commission, 633 F.2d 232 (2d Cir. 1980) (Guardians III ), 16 we categorically rejected the notion that a municipal employer who held a discriminatory exam prior to March 24, 1972, could lawfully continue after that date to invoke the results of the discriminatory exam to make employment appointments. We observed that to conclude otherwise would permit an employer, with impunity, (to) refuse to hire in a timely manner hundreds of minority applicants, solely because of performance on an invalid test, years after Title VII explicitly forbade the use of testing results to discriminate in hiring. Id. at 252 (emphasis in original). 65 Nor does § 703(h) of the Act legitimate defendants' post-Title VII hiring. That section provides in pertinent part as follows: 66 Notwithstanding any other provision of this subchapter, it shall not be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to apply different standards of compensation, or different terms, conditions, or privileges of employment pursuant to a bona fide seniority or merit system, or a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production or to employees who work in different locations, provided that such differences are not the result of an intention to discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, nor shall it be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to give and to act upon the results of any professionally developed ability test provided that such test, its administration or action upon the results is not designed, intended or used to discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. 67 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(h) (emphasis added). The City seeks to characterize its 1971 exam as a bona fide merit system, in order to perpetuate its ability to use that test's results without violating Title VII. The district court, however, found that the 1971 exam was not job related and that it had a discriminatory impact findings that defendants do not challenge on this appeal. Thus, bypassing the question whether the term merit system even applies to hiring decisions, as contrasted with post-hiring decisions, see Guardians III, supra, 633 F.2d at 251-52, we reject the City's attempt to immunize its post-Act hiring by reference to § 703(h) for two reasons. First, since the 1971 test was used to discriminate against minorities, it is expressly excluded from § 703(h). More fundamentally, it would defy reason to characterize as a bona fide merit system a test that does not measure the fitness of those who take it for the positions to be filled according to its results. See id. at 252 ((A) hiring system that ranks applicants according to their performance on discriminatory examinations cannot claim the status of a 'bona fide merit system' within the meaning of the statute.) Thus, defendants' argument, like that of the defendants in Guardians III, is not supported by the decision of the Supreme Court in International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States : 68 Unlike the seniority system in Teamsters, the merit system in the instant case does not measure what it purports to measure. The failing of the department's hiring system is therefore not that it perpetuates the effects of past discrimination, but rather that it perpetuates discrimination. It is one thing to utilize a system that locks in the effects of past discriminatory hiring decisions; it is a very different thing to lock in a discriminatory method of making hiring decisions Nothing in Teamsters implies that by labelling a non-job-related system of employee selection a 'merit' system, an employer can avoid the command of Title VII that it henceforth select its workforce in a non-discriminatory fashion. 69 Guardians III, supra, 633 F.2d at 253 (emphasis in original). 70 Accordingly, we conclude that the City could be held liable under Title VII for its post-Act appointments based on the 1971 test.