Landmark Job Bias Case Won by LDF

    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