Court Opinion

ID: 9426432
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:17:55.955366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:59.993301
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
concurring.
While I agree with the Court’s disposition of this case, I add these comments on the constitutional issue dis*253cussed in Part II and the statutory issue discussed in Part III of the Court’s opinion.
The requirement of purposeful discrimination is a common thread running through the cases summarized in Part II. These cases include criminal convictions which were set aside' because blacks were excluded from the grand jury, a reapportionment case in which political boundaries were obviously influenced to some extent by racial considerations, a school desegregation case, and a case involving the unequal administration of an ordinance purporting to prohibit the operation of laundries in frame buildings. Although it may be proper to use the same language to describe the constitutional claim in each of these contexts, the burden of proving a prima facie case may well involve differing evidentiary considerations. The extent of deference that one pays to the trial court’s determination of the factual issue,, and indeed, the extent to which one characterizes the intent issue as a question of fact or a question of law, will vary in different contexts.
Frequently the most probative evidence of intent will be objective evidence of what actually happened rather than evidence describing the subjective state of mind of the actor. For normally the actor is presumed to have intended the natural consequences of his deeds. This is particularly true in the case of governmental action which is frequently the product of compromise, of collective decisionmaking, and of mixed motivation. It is unrealistic, on the one hand, to require the victim of alleged discrimination to uncover the actual subjective intent of the decisionmaker or, conversely, to invalidate otherwise legitimate action simply because an improper motive affected the deliberation of a participant in the decisional process. A law conscripting clerics should not be invalidated because an atheist voted for it.
*254My point in making this observation is to suggest that the line between discriminatory purpose and discriminatory impact is not nearly as bright, and perhaps not quite as critical, as the reader of the Court’s opinion might assume. I agree, of course, that a constitutional issue does not arise every time some disproportionate impact is shown. On the other hand, when the disproportion is as dramatic as in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, or Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, it really does not matter whether the standard is phrased in terms of purpose or effect. Therefore, although I accept the statement of the general rule in the Court’s opinion, I am not yet prepared to indicate how that standard should be applied in the many cases which have formulated the governing standard in different language.*
My agreement with the conclusion reached in Part II of the Court’s opinion rests on a ground narrower than the Court describes. I do not rely at all on the evidence of good-faith efforts to recruit black police officers. In my judgment, neither those efforts nor the subjective good faith of the District administration, would save Test 21 if it were otherwise invalid.
There are two reasons why I am convinced that the challenge to Test 21 is insufficient. First, the test serves the neutral and legitimate purpose of requiring all applicants to meet a uniform minimum standard of literacy. Reading ability is manifestly relevant to the police function, there is no evidence that the required passing grade was set at an arbitrarily high level, and there is sufficient disparity among high schools and high school graduates to justify the use of a separate uniform test. Second, *255the same test is used throughout the federal service. The applicants for employment in the District of Columbia Police Department represent such a small fraction of the total number of persons who have taken the test that their experience is of minimal probative value in assessing the neutrality of the test itself. That evidence, without more, is not sufficient to overcome the presumption that a test which is this widely used by the Federal Government is in fact neutral in its effect as well as its “purpose” as that term is used in constitutional adjudication.
My study of the statutory issue leads me to the same conclusion reached by the Court in Part III of its opinion. Since the Court of Appeals set aside the portion of the District Court’s summary judgment granting the defendants’ motion, I agree that we cannot ignore the statutory claims even though, as the Court makes clear, ante, at 238 n. 10, there is no Title YII question in this case. The actual statutory holdings are limited to 42 U. S. C. § 1981 and § 1-320 of the District of Columbia Code, to which regulations of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have no direct application.
The parties argued the case as though Title VII standards were applicable. In a general way those standards shed light on the issues, but there is sufficient individuality and complexity to that statute, and to the regulations promulgated under it, to make it inappropriate simply to transplant those standards in their entirety into a different statutory scheme having a different history. Moreover, the subject matter of this case — the validity of qualifications for the law enforcement profession — is one in which federal district judges have a greater expertise than in many others. I therefore do not regard this as a case in which the District Court was required to apply Title YII standards as strictly as would *256be necessary either in other contexts or in litigation actually arising under that statute.
The Court’s specific holding on the job-relatedness question contains, I believe, two components. First, as a matter of law, it is permissible for the police department to use a test for the purpose of predicting ability to master a training program even if the test does not otherwise predict ability to perform on the job. I regard this as a reasonable proposition and not inconsistent with the Court’s prior holdings, although some of its prior language obviously did not contemplate this precise problem. Second, as a matter of fact, the District Court’s finding that there was a correlation between success on the test and success in the training program has sufficient evidentiary support to withstand attack under the “clearly erroneous” standard mandated by Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 52 (a). Whether or not we would have made the same finding of fact, the opinion evidence identified in n. 17 of the Court’s opinion- — and indeed the assumption made by the Court of Appeals quoted therein — -is surely adequate to support the finding under the proper standard of appellate review.
On the understanding that nothing which I have said is inconsistent with the Court’s reasoning, I join the opinion of the Court except to the extent that it expresses an opinion on the merits of the cases cited ante, at 244-245, n. 12.

Speeifically, I express no opinion on the merits of the cases listed in n. 12 of the Court’s opinion.