Court Opinion

ID: 9460039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:38:38.471142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:26.625835
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
Although it is .unfortunate that the district court incorrectly characterized the deficiencies in plaintiff’s case as a *813failure to maintain the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence — a characterization plainly inappropriate for disposition of a summary judgment motion — I am nevertheless persuaded that his ruling was correct. I join in Judge Swygert’s analysis of the contract claims and the claims against the Union. However, with respect to the statutory claim of sex discrimination by the company, I do not agree that any issue of fact requiring a trial has been raised.
Three different factors have combined to produce the effect which plaintiff asserts is illegal. First, the task of lifting brass cups produced by the blanking press requires sufficient strength to handle a weight of 80 pounds. Plaintiff is not physically qualified to do that work. Thus, this is not a situation comparable to the rule in Bowe v. Colgate-Palmolive Company, 416 F.2d 711 (7th Cir. 1969), which excluded all females from a particular job category because some could not do the work. A rule which limits eligibility for a job to persons physically qualified to perform the work is not discriminatory even if fewer members of one sex have the requisite physical characteristics.
Second, at a time when plaintiff was absent on sick leave, the defendant terminated the operation of Department 359. The uncontradicted evidence indicates that the reason for this action was economic; the work being done in that department was then unprofitable. Plaintiff has adduced no evidence tending to prove that the closing was motivated by a discriminatory purpose.
Third, while plaintiff was still on leave, the department was reactivated with a smaller work force. Instead of using one helper for every two press operators, the new arrangement required only one helper for four presses because the operator was assigned the responsibility for removing the. heavy brass cups. In consequence, the number of employees in the department was significantly reduced. As a result of the reassignment of a portion of the helper’s duties to the operators, the operator was required either to stop the machine occasionally or to leave the normal operating position briefly to handle the heavy brass cups. The change therefore involved some slight increase in the risk of an operating breakdown, but it is undisputed that the change effected significant savings in the cost of operating the department'.1
The three factors discussed so far include no evidence that any of the actions taken by the company were motivated by an intent to discriminate against the plaintiff or against female employees. Support for the discrimination charge is predicated entirely on the fact that the operating changes resulted in a change in the relative number of females employed in the department and employed as blanking press operators.
Unquestionably, statistical or demographic evidence often provides persuasive and reliable evidence of illegal discrimination. It may raise a reasonable inference of subjective bias, or it may prove that a non-job related requirement has a discriminatory effect which is illegal even if it was unintended. Cf. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 91 S.Ct. 849, 28 L.Ed.2d 158. In this ease, however, neither inference is reasonable nor, indeed, in my opinion, permissible. There is no dispute about the fact that the operating changes did produce economies, the fact that physical strength is related to job performance, or the fact that there are relatively fewer females than males with the physical strength required for this particular job. I am therefore not persuaded that this record contains any evidence supporting an acceptable inference of sex discrimination.
*814In sum, I agree that a non-random distribution of jobs between males and females may raise an inference of discrimination. But if the record contains an uneontradicted credible explanation of business factors which naturally produce such a non-random distribution, I do not see how those predictable consequences can properly be accepted as evidence of a secret discriminatory motive. For if this statistical evidence is sufficient, then logically any ratio other than 50-50 may require a jury trial of a claim alleged by a member of the disfavored sex.2
I therefore respectfully dissent insofar as the summary judgment entered by the district court is reversed.

. The portions of plaintiff’s affidavit which are read to “impugn the justification of the company” merely indicate that the management decision to effect a significant cost reduction involved a minimal increase in the risk of an operating breakdown. A management decision to accept that risk as the price of reducing costs does not constitute evidence of sex discrimination.

. In this case the majority relies on plaintiff’s affidavit, as well as the numerical evidence, but as I have explained in note 1, supra, I find nothing in the affidavit supporting either an inference of sex discrimination or inference that the company’s explanation for the changes was contrived.