Correspondence from Grace Richardson to William Quigley, Esq. Re: Major v. Treen
Correspondence
June 25, 1985

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Press Releases, Volume 6. Landmark Job Bias Case Won by LDF, 1971. 2ae5946a-ba92-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/8e4626ba-7e93-4332-9dd7-9687db46dfe7/landmark-job-bias-case-won-by-ldf. Accessed August 19, 2025.
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MARCH 10, 1971 : FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LANDMARK JOB BIAS CASE WON BY LDF Washington, D.C.--In a unanimous 8-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday (March 8) that companies cannot use tests or maintain any employment or promotional policies which have the effect of eliminating Negroes or which lock in the effects of past discrimination, unless such tests or policies truly measure ability to do the job being sought. This powerful ruling -- the high court's first decision relating to the provision of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing racial discrimination in employment -- means that only the fact of actual discrimination is at issue. No longer is it necessary to prove that the intent of a company in instituting its hiring or promotional policies was to perpetuate discrimination. Proving intent, often a difficult or even impossible task, has long been a major roadblock to civil rights lawyers even in cases where the net effects of corporate policies were obviously discriminatory. The case was brought before the court by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), which praised the ruling as a landmark. In a statement given to the press, Jack Greenberg, Director- Counsel of the LDF said that his organization was "...now ready to proceed with scores of cases involving many thousands of workers who have been denied jobs or promotions because of non job- related tests which have come into widespread use since passage of the Fair Employment Act (Title VII)." (more) Jack Greenberg - Director-Counsel JOB BIAS CASE WON PAGE 2 The case on which the decision is bas 1 arose when 13 black employees of the Duke Power's Dan River Stream Station in Draper, North Carolina applied for transfers from that company's sole all- black and lowest-paying Labor Department, to jobs in the company's traditionally white Coal Handling Department, one peg above Labor. The applications for transfer were made after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title VII which forbade job discrimination on account of race, color, religion, national origin or sex. Immediately after passage of the bill, however, Duke had laid down additional requirements for transferring within its departments: either you had to have a high school diploma, or else achieve a passing score on one of two highly abstract intelligence tests -- the “Wonderlic" or the "Bennett." The tests included questions like, "Does 'B.C.' mean ‘before Christ?'" and do "adopt" and “adapt" have similar meanings? During the case's progression to the Supreme Court, the LDF received relief for some of the 13 black men seeking transfers when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the new policy placed an unfair burden on tenured black employees because tenured whites had been permitted for years to transfer throughout the plant without being subject to any of the new, companywide requirements. That ruling, unfortunately, provided no relief at all for future black employees -- who would still be subject to the new corporate promotional policies. For this reason, LDF sought to challenge the whole concept of corporate hiring and promotional policies which have evolved, especially in the South, to evade compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (more) JOB BIAS CASE WON PAGE 3 In the Supreme Court LDF argued that the new requirements for transferring within Duke had nothing to do with the ability to do the jobs being sought and that the sole reason for their existence was to exclude blacks from advancing within the company. LDF pointed to the conditions under which most blacks get their educations in the South, which makes it less likely for black people than for whites to be able to satisfy such testing and schooling requirements. Accordingly, in its decision, the court noted that "the objective of Congress in the enactment of Title VII is plain It was to achieve equality of employment opportunities and remove barriers that have operated in the past to favor an identifiable group of white employees over other employees. Under the Act, practices, procedures, or tests neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms of intent, cannot be maintained if they operate to 'freeze' the status quo of prior discriminatory employment practices ... What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification ... The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation ... What Congress has commanded is that any tests used must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract." =30=— For Further Information: Sandra O'Gorman (212) 586-8397