Opinion ID: 419216
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appropriate Labor Pool

Text: 19 Bearing in mind that the focus of a disparate impact inquiry is those employment practices that have a discriminatory effect, see Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 431, 91 S.Ct. 849, 853, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971), [i]dentification of the appropriate candidate pool and its racial [or ethnic or sexual] makeup is usually the starting point for impact analysis. Bartholet, Application of Title VII to Jobs in High Places, 95 Harv.L.Rev. 945, 970 (1982). The best evidence of discriminatory impact is proof that an employment practice selects members of a protected class in a proportion smaller than their percentage in the pool of actual applicants, or, in promotion and benefit cases, in a proportion smaller than in the actual pool of eligible employees. See Rowe v. Cleveland Pneumatic Co., Numerical Control, Inc., 690 F.2d 88, 93 (6th Cir.1982); Hester v. Southern Railway Co., 497 F.2d 1374, 1379 (5th Cir.1974). 20 Disparate impact should always be measured against the actual pool of applicants or eligible employees unless there is a characteristic of the challenged selection device that makes use of the actual pool of applicants or eligible employees inappropriate. Commonly, such a characteristic would occur in discriminatory hiring cases where the employment practice in question is in the nature of an entrance requirement. In these cases, persons who lack the challenged requirement will self-select themselves out of the pool of applicants. Examples of such entrance requirements include height and weight specifications, see Dothard v. Rawlinson, 433 U.S. 321, 97 S.Ct. 2720, 53 L.Ed.2d 786 (1977), and high school graduation, see Griggs, supra. When an employer requires such qualifications, the makeup of the pool of actual applicants does not fairly reflect the pool of individuals affected by the challenged requirement. See Dothard, supra, 433 U.S. at 330, 97 S.Ct. at 2727. In these cases, disparate impact may be established through reference to a reasonable proxy for the pool of individuals actually affected by the alleged discrimination. The choice is usually between general population statistics and the statistics of a relevant labor market. 21 General population statistics are useful as a proxy for the pool of potential applicants, if ever, only when the challenged employer practice screens applicants for entry level jobs requiring little or no specialized skills. 5 If special skills are required for a job, the proxy pool must be that of the local labor force possessing the requisite skills. See Valentino v. United States Postal Service, 674 F.2d 56, 71 (D.C.Cir.1982); Kinsey v. First Regional Securities, Inc., 557 F.2d 830, 839 (D.C.Cir.1977); Rich v. Martin Marietta Corp., 467 F.Supp. 587, 609-10 (D.Colo.1979); cf. Dothard, supra, 433 U.S. at 338, 97 S.Ct. at 2731 (Rehnquist, J., concurring); Hazelwood School District v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 308 n. 13, 97 S.Ct. 2736, 2741 n. 13, 53 L.Ed.2d 768 (1977) (similar analysis of proper labor pools in disparate treatment case); United States v. Ironworkers Local 86, 443 F.2d 544, 551 (9th Cir.) (necessity of accurate statistical comparison for inference of discrimination), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 984, 92 S.Ct. 447, 30 L.Ed.2d 367 (1971). This rule is a natural deduction from the commonsense observation that if a person is not otherwise qualified for a job, he is not deterred from applying by any particular employment requirement unrelated to his ability to perform the job. 6 22