''Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio'', 490 U.S. 642 (1989), was a court case concerning employment discrimination, argued before the

United States Supreme Court 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 January 18, 1989, and decided on June 5, 1989.

Facts

A group of nonwhite cannery workers filed suit in District Court citing

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 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 requi ...

complaining that the

Wards Cove Packing Company Wards Cove Packing Company was a cannery located in the community of Ward Cove, on the northern outskirts of the larger city of Ketchikan in the U.S. state of Alaska. The original Wards Cove Cannery was established in 1928, on Ward Cove and operat ...

, a company that operated several Alaskan

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus ''Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Oncorhy ...

canneries Canning is a method of food preservation in which food is processed and sealed in an airtight container (jars like Mason jars, and steel and tin cans). Canning provides a shelf life that typically ranges from one to five years, although un ...

, was using

discriminatory Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, rel ...

hiring practices that resulted in a large number of the skilled permanent jobs that mostly did not involve working in a cannery (referred to as "noncannery" positions) to be filled by

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White o ...

workers, and a large number of the unskilled seasonal cannery jobs to be filled by local nonwhite workers. In this case the nonwhite workers were predominantly

native Alaskans Alaska Natives (also known as Alaskan Natives, Native Alaskans, Indigenous Alaskans, Aboriginal Alaskans or First Alaskans) are the indigenous peoples of Alaska and include Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a number ...

and

Filipinos Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or othe ...

(

Alaskeros The Alaskeros are Filipino seasonal migrant workers in the United States and their descendants. They worked in salmon canneries in Alaska during the summer, and on farms in Washington, Oregon, and California during the rest of the year. The Alaskero ...

). The District Court found in favor of the company. The workers appealed to the

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...

, which reversed the District Court decision, stating the workers had made a '' prima facie'' case of disparate impact. The decision was based on statistics provided by the workers that showed a high percentage of nonwhite workers in the cannery jobs and a low percentage of the skilled noncannery jobs filled by nonwhite workers. The court also ruled that if a substantial difference in the racial composition of the available population and the composition of the positions was found, it was up to the claimants to prove that this was due to discriminatory hiring practices.https://www.oyez.org/cases/1988/87-1387

Judgment

The company then appealed the Court of Appeals' ruling to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court determined that the Court of Appeals had erred by using inappropriate statistics and comparison. The majority determined that the proper comparison was to compare the percentage of nonwhite workers in noncannery jobs with the percentage of the available labor pool that were nonwhite and who had the appropriate skills to perform the noncannery jobs. The Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Court of Appeals with instructions to use the more appropriate comparison. Further if, on remand, the Respondents did establish a prima facie disparate-impact case the Petitioners would then need to "produce evidence of a legitimate business justification" for the hiring practices that created the disparity.

Significance

Soon after the decision, Congress amended Title VII with the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to counter the Supreme Court's holding in ''Ward's Cove'', thereby nullifying the case's precedent. The bill, in part, reads:

Notes

External links

* *

Facts

Judgment

Significance

See also

Notes

External links

Archives