Court Opinion

ID: 8898631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 00:35:26.531195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:07:40.353691
License: Public Domain

IRVING R. KAUFMAN, Chief Judge
(concurring):
I fully concur in Judge Feinberg’s well-reasoned opinion, and would merely offer a few additional observations in order to avoid any misconstruction of our holding.
One principle is clear to me. We do not, by our holding today, seek to disparage the wide range of benefits that may flow from *657a properly functioning seniority system. A “last-hired, first-fired” plan appropriately provides longer-employed individuals- with a substantial measure of freedom from fear of unemployment. It, therefore, enables them to engage in meaningful long-range personal planning while simultaneously inducing a degree of peace of mind that may enhance their productivity on the job. And, by rewarding the worker who avoids frequent job changes, it may have an impact on the economy itself, by reducing duplicative hiring and training costs, and, of course, it properly benefits the individual employer. The apparent neutrality and fairness of the procedure tends to promote labor peace and, indeed, prohibits the employer from discriminatorily discharging certain individuals because of race or sex.
Accordingly, it is important to emphasize that our holding is in no way intended to alter or compromise the underlying structure of the seniority system established by § 80 of the New York Civil Service Law. It merely represents a refusal to allow a system intended as a safeguard against arbitrariness to become a device for perpetuating past caprice. Nor does our decision sanction the use of preferential treatment or reverse discrimination to achieve this end. The standard we have established restricts relief to those who have already demonstrated their qualifications for the position of police officer and can prove that they were improperly deprived of their rightful place in the seniority hierarchy. The maximum remedy authorized by our decision for those plaintiffs who satisfy their burden of proof, under the circumstances present here, is nothing more than to be restored to parity with the male police officers hired at the time these female police officers were discriminatorily denied employment. The only special advantages implicated by our holding are those improperly received by some male police officers, whose location high on the seniority list resulted from unfair discrimination at the expense of equally or more qualified females. Such unjust preferential treatment should be corrected and eradicated.
Of course, to require mathematical certainty of proof would be to render the rights we confer impossible to vindicate in practice. Perhaps two examples will illuminate the results we anticipate. The June 30, 1975 layoffs applied, it appears, only to officers hired after March, 1969. If so, relief should be available to an individual who proves she took the 1964 examination for “policewoman,” achieved a score on that examination that, were she a man, would have assured her employment, but nevertheless was not appointed until 1970 solely because of the low quota for women prevailing in the Police Department in 1964. This person satisfies the burden of proving that she would have had sufficient seniority to withstand the § 80 layoff but for the discrimination in 1964. Such a showing would not, however, be possible for a female who became a police officer upon reaching the minimum hiring age for police officers in 1973 (assuming, as we do, that all officers hired after 1969 must be laid off under the § 80 formula).
It is conceivable that the standard of proof we require may be difficult or impossible to meet for some female police officers who took no overt action with regard to employment in the Police Department during the years in which discrimination in hiring prevailed. Nor would it be appropriate to interpret our holding as stating that some female officers will be put into a favored position to claim that relief must be automatic even though they cannot establish that the prior discrimination in any way deterred them from, or interfered with their quest for, employment in the Police Department. The proof required should not pose a problem in the future, however, in view of the notice our opinion provides to all. Moreover, because of the male police officers’ important countervailing interest, we believe it inappropriate to establish a special or double standard for the plaintiffs before us, even though they obviously had no notice, at the time they suffered discrimination, of the requirements we now impose.
*658We entertain no doubts that those who do meet the standard of proof here established have a right to be positioned within the seniority system as if they had been hired at a time earlier than they actually were. As Judge Feinberg emphasized, this Court and others have provided remedies under Title VII for minority employees who were hired but discriminatorily relegated to less desirable departments within a company— and then disadvantaged by facially neutral departmental seniority systems. Surely, it would be incongruous to deny relief to those who were not simply restricted to less attractive jobs, but indeed were discriminatorily refused any employment at all.