Griggs v. Duke Power Company
**Overview of Griggs v. Duke Power Company**
Griggs v. Duke Power Company is a landmark Supreme Court case decided in 1971 that established the "adverse impact" test for evaluating employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case arose when African American employees at Duke Power Company challenged the company's requirement of a high school diploma and passing scores on standardized tests for job transfers, which disproportionately affected black workers. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled that employment practices that result in unequal outcomes for different racial groups could constitute discrimination, even if there was no intent to discriminate.
This significant ruling required employers to demonstrate that their job requirements were necessary for job performance when such practices had a disparate impact on minority groups. The decision prompted a reevaluation of job qualifications across the United States and influenced subsequent cases and legislation aimed at preventing discrimination in the workplace. However, later rulings, particularly in the 1980s, began to weaken the Griggs precedent, leading to further legislative responses, including the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which reaffirmed the principles established in Griggs. The case remains a critical reference point in discussions of employment discrimination and civil rights.
Griggs v. Duke Power Company
The Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Company established the “adverse impact” test for discrimination so that an unequal statistical pattern could be used as prima facie evidence.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, prohibited workplace segregation. Shortly after the law took effect in mid-1965, Duke Power Company in North Carolina rescinded its policy of restricting black workers to its labor department, so in principle they could transfer to other departments. Nevertheless, according to a company policy, begun in 1955, all employees but those in Duke’s labor department had to have a high school diploma. Therefore, all those applying for a transfer from the labor department in 1965 needed a diploma. For those lacking a high school diploma (African Americans were far less likely to have completed twelve grades than white Americans in that part of North Carolina), an alternative was to score at the national median on two standardized aptitude tests.
Willie Griggs and coworkers in the labor department at the company’s Dan River steam-generating plant filed a class-action charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which ruled in favor of Griggs. When the company refused to conciliate the case, Griggs and his coworkers filed suit in district court. The court held that a claim of prior inequities was beyond the scope of Title VII and that the requirements for a high school diploma or a passing score on standardized tests were not intentionally discriminatory.
The district court’s decision was overruled by the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger delivered a unanimous Supreme Court opinion (8 to 0), setting forth the adverse impact test. According to this principle, if statistics show that a job requirement screens out one race, the employer must prove that the requirement is relevant to the performance of the job. Since the percentage of black high school graduates and percentages of African Americans who passed the two tests were substantially below percentages for white Americans, Duke Power had to prove that the jobs sought by Griggs and his coworkers required completing high school or having a level of intelligence at the national median. Since the company advanced no such evidence, the Court ruled that Title VII discrimination had occurred and decreed that “any tests used must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract.”
The decision had an extremely broad impact: it called into question all lists of qualifications for every job in the United States. Employers were called upon to review job qualifications and to recalibrate job duties to job qualifications or risk successful discrimination suits.
In the 1980s the Supreme Court began to chip away at the Griggs ruling. In Wards Cove Packing Company v. Atonio (1989), the Court shifted the burden of proof so that those filing suit must prove that specific job requirements alone cause statistical disparities. Congress responded by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1991, codifying the original Griggs ruling into law.
Bibliography
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