''Griggs v. Duke Power Co.'', 401 U.S. 424 (1971), was a court case argued before the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

on December 14, 1970. It concerned

employment discrimination Employment discrimination is a form of illegal discrimination in the workplace based on legally protected characteristics. In the U.S., federal anti-discrimination law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees based on age, race, g ...

and the disparate impact theory, and was decided on March 8, 1971. It is generally considered the first case of its type. The Supreme Court ruled that the company's employment requirements did not pertain to applicants' ability to perform the job, and so were unintentionally discriminating against black employees. The judgment famously held that " Congress has now provided that tests or criteria for employment or promotion may not provide equality of opportunity merely in the sense of the fabled offer of milk to the stork and the fox."

Facts

In the 1950s Duke Power's

Dan River Steam Station The Dan River Steam Station is a power plant in Eden, North Carolina, owned by Duke Energy. The plant comprises three natural gas-fueled combustion turbines, which began operation in 1968.), and two natural gas-fueled combined cycle turbines ar ...

in North Carolina had a policy restricting black employees to its "Labor" department, where the highest-paying position paid less than the lowest-paying position in the four other departments. In 1955 the company added the requirement of a

high school diploma A high school diploma or high school degree is a North American academic school leaving qualification awarded upon high school graduation. The high school diploma is typically obtained after a course of study lasting four years, from grade 9 to gra ...

for employment in any department other than Labor, and offered to pay two-thirds of the high-school training tuition for employees without a diploma. On July 2, 1965, the day the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...

took effect, Duke Power added two employment tests, which would allow employees without high-school diplomas to transfer to higher-paying departments. The Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test was a test of

mechanical aptitude According to Paul Muchinsky in his textbook ''Psychology Applied to Work'', "mechanical aptitude tests require a person to recognize which mechanical principle is suggested by a test item." The underlying concepts measured by these items include so ...

, and the

Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test The Wonderlic Contemporary Cognitive Ability Test (formerly Wonderlic Personnel Test) is an assessment used to measure the cognitive ability and problem-solving aptitude of prospective employees for a range of occupations. It is a proprietar ...

was an IQ test measuring general intelligence. Blacks were almost ten times less likely than whites to meet these new employment and transfer requirements. According to the 1960 Census, while 34% of white males in North Carolina had high-school diplomas, only 18% of blacks did. The disparities of aptitude tests were far greater; with the cutoffs set at the median for high-school graduates, 58% of whites passed, compared to 6% of blacks.

Judgment

The Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, if such tests disparately impact

ethnic minority The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...

groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required. Because Title VII was passed pursuant to Congress's power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the disparate impact test later articulated by the Supreme Court in ''

Washington v. Davis ''Washington v. Davis'', 426 U.S. 229 (1976), was a United States Supreme Court case that established that laws that have a racially discriminatory effect but were not adopted to advance a racially discriminatory purpose are valid under the U.S. Co ...

'', 426 US 229 (1976) is inapplicable. (The ''Washington v. Davis'' test for disparate impact is used in constitutional

equal protection clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...

cases, while Title VII's prohibition on disparate impact is a statutory mandate.) As such, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment tests (when used as a decisive factor in employment decisions) that are not a "reasonable measure of job performance," regardless of the absence of actual intent to discriminate. Since the aptitude tests involved, and the high school diploma requirement, were broad-based and not directly related to the jobs performed, Duke Power's employee transfer procedure was found by the Court to be in violation of the Act.

Chief Justice Burger Warren Earl Burger (September 17, 1907 – June 25, 1995) was an American attorney and jurist who served as the 15th chief justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Burger graduated from the St. Paul Colleg ...

wrote the majority opinion.

Significance

''Griggs v. Duke Power Co.'' also held that the employer had the burden of producing and proving the business necessity of a test. However, in '' Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio'' (1989), the Court reduced the employer's ( Wards Cove Packing Company) burden to producing only evidence of business justification. In 1991, the Civil Rights Act was amended to overturn that portion of the ''Wards Cove'' decision—although legislators included language designed to exempt the Wards Cove company itself. David Frum asserts that before ''Griggs'', employers did not have to separate intentional wrongs from unintentional wrongs if they treated all applicants equally by appearances. Although private employers with 15 or more employees are subject to

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requir ...

, it was held in ''

'' (1976) that the disparate impact doctrine does not apply to the equal protection requirement of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, lawsuits against public employers may be barred by sovereign immunity.

Notes

References

* * *E McGaughey, ''A Casebook on Labour Law'' (Hart 2019) ch 13, 595

External links