Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody Court Opinion

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U.S. SUPREME COURT REPORTS 45 L Ed 2d 

those two remedies.!8 

The District Court also grounded . 
its denial of backpay on the fact that 
the respondents initially disclaimed 

any interest in backpay, first assert- 
ing their claim five years after the 
complaint was filed. The court con- 

cluded that the petitioners had been 
“prejudiced” by this conduct. The 
Court of Appeals reversed on the 

ground “that the broad aims of Title 
VII require that the issue of back 

pay be fully developed and deter- 
mined even though it was not raised 

until the post-trial stage of litiga- 
tion,” 474 F2d, at 141. 

[422 US 424] 

[23-25, 26a] It is true that Title 

VII contains no legal bar to raising 

backpay claims after the complaint 

for injunctive relief has been filed, 
or indeed after a trial on that com- 

plaint has been had." Furthermore, 
Fed Rule Civ Proc 54(c) directs that 

“every final judgment shall 
grant the relief to which the party 

in whose favor it is rendered is 
entitled, even if the party has not 

demanded such relief in his plead- 
ings.” 

But a party may not be “entitled” to 

relief if its conduct of the cause has 
improperly and substantially preju- 
diced the other party. The respon- 
dents here were not merely tardy, 

but also inconsistent, in demanding 

backpay. To deny backpay because a 

particular cause has been prosecuted 

in an eccentric fashion, prejudicial 

to the other party, does not offend 

the broad purposes of Title VII. This 

is not to say, however, that the Dis- 

trict Court’s ruling was necessarily 

correct. Whether the petitioners 

were in fact prejudiced, and whether 

the respondents’ trial conduct was 

excusable, are questions that will be 

open to review by the Court of Ap- 
peals, if the District Court, on re- 

mand, decides again to decline to 
make any award of backpay.?® But 

the standard of review will be the 
familiar one of whether the District 
Court was “clearly erroneous” in its 

factual findings and whether it 
“abused” its traditional discretion to 

locate “a just result” in light of the 
circumstances peculiar to the case, 

[422 US 425] 

Langnes v Green, 282 US 531, 541, 
75 L Ed 520, 51 S Ct 243 (1931). On 
these issues of procedural regularity 

and prejudice, the “broad aims of 
Title VII” provide no ready solution. 

III 

[27] In Griggs v Duke Power Co. 
401 US 424, 28 L Ed 2d 158, 91 S Ct 

849 (1971), this Court unanimously 
held that Title VII forbids the use of 

18. We note that some courts have denied 

backpay, and limited their judgments to de- 
claratory relief, in cases where the employer 

discriminated on sexual grounds in reliance 

on state “female protective” statutes that 

were inconsistent with Title VII. See, e. g., 

Kober v Westinghouse Electric Corp. 480 F2d 

240 (CA3 1973); LeBlanc v Southern Bell 

Telephone & Telegraph Co. 460 F2d 1228 

(CA5 1972); Manning v General Motors Corp. 

466 F2d 812 (CA6 1972); Rosenfeld v Southern 

Pacific Co. 444 F2d 1219 (CA 1971). There is 
no occasion in this case to decide whether 

these decisions were correct. As to the effect 

300 

of Title VII on state statutes inconsistent with 

it, see 42 USC § 2000e-7 [42 USCS § 2000e-7]. 

19. See Rosen v Public Service Electric & 
Gas Co. 409 F2d, at 780 n 20; Robinson v 

Lorillard Corp. 444 F2d, at 802-803; United 

States v Hayes International Corp. 456 F2d 

112, 116, 121 (CA5 1972). 

20. [26b] The District Court’s stated 
grounds for denying backpay were, appar- 

ently, cumulative rather than independent. 
The District Court may, of course, reconsider 

its backpay determination in light of our 

ruling on the “good faith” question. 

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ALBEMARLE PAPER CO. v MOODY 

422 US 405, 45 L Ed 2d 280, 95 S Ct 2362 

employment tests that are discrimi- 

natory in effect unless the employer 

meets “the burden of showing that 

any given requirement [has] . . . a 

manifest relationship to the employ- 

ment in question.” Id., at 432, 28 L 

Ed 2d 158, 91 S Ct 849.2! This bur- 

den arises, of course, only after the 

complaining party or class has made 

out a prima facie case of discrimina- 
tion, i.e., has shown that the tests in 

question select applicants for hire or 

promotion in a racial pattern signifi- 

cantly different from that of the pool 

of applicants. See McDonnell Doug- 

las Corp. v Green, 411 US 792, 802, 

36 L Ed 2d 668, 93 S Ct 1817 (1973). 

If an employer does then meet the 

burden of proving that its tests are 

“job related,” it remains open to the 

complaining party to show that 

other tests or selection devices, with- 

out a similarly undesirable racial 

effect, would also serve the employ- 

er’s legitimate interest in “efficient 

and trustworthy workmanship.” Id., 

at 801, 36 L Ed 2d 668, 93 S Ct 1817. 

Such a showing would be evidence 

that the employer was using its tests 

merely as a “pretext” for discrimina- 

tion. Id., at 804-805, 36 L Ed 2d 668, 

93 S Ct 1817. In the present case, 

however, we are concerned only with 

the question whether Albemarle has 

shown its tests to be job related. 

[422 US 426] 

The concept of job relatedness 
takes on meaning from the facts of 

the Griggs case. A power company 

in North Carolina had reserved its 

skilled jobs for whites prior to 1965. 
Thereafter, the company allowed Ne- 

gro workers to transfer to skilled 

jobs, but all transferees—white and 

Negro—were required to attain na- 

tional median scores on two tests: 

“[Tlhe Wonderlic Personnel Test, 
which purports to measure gen- 
eral intelligence, and the Bennett 
Mechanical Comprehension Test. 
Neither was directed or intended 

to measure the ability to learn to 
perform a particular job or cate- 

gory of jobs. . . . 

“. . . Both were adopted, as the 
Court of Appeals noted, without 
meaningful study of their relation- 
ship to job-performance ability. 

Rather, a vice president of the 
Company testified, the require- 
ments were instituted on the Com- 
pany’s judgment that they gener- 

ally would improve the overall 

quality of the work force.” Griggs 
v Duke Power Co., supra, at 428- 

431, 28 LL Ed 2d 158, 91 S Ct 849. 

The Court took note of “the inade- 

quacy of broad and general testing 
devices as well as the infirmity of 
using diplomas or degrees as fixed 

measures of capability,” id., at 433, 

and concluded: 

“Nothing in the Act precludes 
the use of testing or measuring 

procedures; obviously they are use- 
ful. What Congress has forbidden 
is giving these devices and mecha- 
nisms controlling force unless they 
are demonstrably a reasonable 
measure of job performance . . . 
What Congress has commanded is 

that any tests used must measure 
the person for the job and not the 
person in the abstract.” Id. at 

21. In Griggs, the Court was construing 42 

USC §2000e-2(h) [42 USCS § 2000e-2(h)], 
which provides in pertinent part that it shall 
not “be an unlawful employment practice for 

an employer to give and to act upon the 

results of any professionally developed ability 

test provided that such test, its administra- 
tion or action upon the results is not de- 

signed, intended or used to discriminate be- 
cause of race, color, religion, sex or national 

origin.” 

301 

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