Court Opinion

ID: 9480052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:36:31.569274+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:27.301602
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I write separately only to comment briefly on the majority’s observation that, “By 1984 the United States had lost its “enthusiasm” for quotas.” Supra at 244. I doubt that there ever has been “enthusiasm” for quotas. They were very necessary evils introduced to correct or offset the severe and enduring injustices of the past.
In most places, until I was almost into middle age, the very suggestion that a black female could be a police officer would have invited psychiatric examination for the suggester, or, at the very least, a hearty gale of laughter. The stereotypical black female in those days was Aunt Jemi-ma. Goals or quotas were absolutely essential to making the first halting moves away from a long-congealed pattern of discrimination toward practices modestly congruent with present-day constitutional standards.
Judge Marshall, who has insightfully and courageously superintended this difficult process, has now decided that the Chicago Police Department is well enough to be taken off the powerful medicine of quotas, with its unpredictable side effects. I hope the Department will continue to make progress with less potent forms of treatment. There is no need now, however, to regret the drastic measures of the past that have brought the patient this far along the road to recovery.