Court Opinion

ID: 9662517
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:11:51.768645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:56.689538
License: Public Domain

*594KELLER, Justice,
concurring.
In my opinion, the trial court correctly granted a judgment NOV in favor of Appellants because Appellees failed to prove an element of their prima facie case — i.e., that they would have been promoted to the rank of lieutenant were it not for Chief Jones’s intentional discrimination in favor of then-Sergeants Dreher and Smith. Accordingly, I concur in the result reached by the majority. I write separately, however, because, unlike the majority, I believe that Chief Jones engaged in prohibited employment discrimination. As such, I occupy an ideological position far closer to the dissenter than the majority with regard to the primary ■ issues of dispute between them. In my view, Justice Johnstone’s dissenting opinion correctly observes that “[t]he discrimination in this case had nothing to do with the banding process' itself ... [but] flows directly from Chief Jones’s testimony that he promoted Dreher and Smith solely on the basis of their race.”1
With respect to this “banding issue,” I am inclined to believe, as some courts have suggested,2 that existing affirmative action jurisprudence erroneously tends to homogenize a wide variety of affirmative action techniques by evaluating their permissibility under the same criteria. And, perhaps, traditional equal protection clause and civil rights law “validity” analyses are inappropriate for “inclusive” affirmative action techniques — such as minority recruitment or the banding process utilized by the Jefferson County Police Department — that: (1) can be contrasted from “exclusive” affirmative action techniques seeking to “select some candidates rather than others from a pool”3 in that the inclusive techniques “have as their primary purpose[s] ensuring that the pool of candidates is as large as possible ... [and] ensuring] that as many qualified candidates as possible make it to the selection process”;4 and (2) affect third party members of the majority population only by requiring them to compete with a larger number of qualified candidates. While I see no valid objection to a banding process that merely facilitates equality of opportunity by allowing a greater number of minority applicants to compete for promotions within the Jefferson County Police Department, I cannot extend the same deference to Chief Jones’s ad hoc decision to consider race in his promotion decisions once the band of applicants was placed before him:
The crucial distinction is between expanding the applicant pool and actually selecting from that pool. Expanding the pool is an inclusive act. No one can rightly complain because he has been passed over for a more qualified candidate even if that candidate was recruited .... Exclusion occurs if, for example, the best candidate from the expanded pool fails to get the job because he was passed over for a woman. This can only happen at the selection stage, which occurs after the pool expansion process.5
Here, the record establishes unequivocally that Chief Jones engaged in paradigmatic employment discrimination when he evaluated the two minority applicants for lieutenant not upon the basis of their quali*595fications but upon the color of their skin. Although I agree with the majority that Regulation 7.2(3) “afforded equally qualified female and minority employees the same opportunity for advancement as Caucasian male employees,”61 also agree with Justice Johnstone’s observation that:
[T]he record is completely devoid of proof that there existed any imbalance in the number of minorities in general, or African-Americans in particular, holding the rank of lieutenant at the time that the promotions in question were made. Such proof was absolutely necessary to defend the decision made by Chief Jones to promote two candidates to the rank of lieutenant solely on the basis of race.7
Regulation 7.2(3) had served its function as an inclusive affirmative action technique by the time the band of candidates was submitted to Chief Jones. What happened thereafter constituted employment discrimination. While I agree with the result reached by the majority because I believe that Appellees did not present a prima facie case that would entitle them to the damages the jury awarded them, I emphasize that, in my view, the record contains nothing to warrant, justify, or excuse Chief Jones’s intentional discrimination on the basis of race.

. Jefferson Co. v. Zaring, 91 S.W.3d 595, 599 (2002) (Johnstone, J. dissenting).

. See Shuford v. Alabama State Board of Education, 897 F.Supp. 1535, 1551-1554 (M.D.Ala.1995); Alspaugh v. Comm. on Law Enforcement Standards, 246 Mich.App. 547, 634 N.W.2d 161 (2001).

. Shuford, supra note 2 at 1551.

. Id.

. Id. at 1553.

. Jefferson Co. v. Zaring, supra note-at 595. Justice Johnstone shares this view as well. Id. at 599 (Johnstone, J., dissenting) ("The implementation of promotion through banding in this case simply put minorities within the JCPD on a more equal footing with other white officers.”).

. Id. at 595 (Johnstone, J., dissenting).