Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney
Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney is a significant Supreme Court case that addresses the intersection of employment law, gender discrimination, and veterans' rights. The case arose from a Massachusetts statute that granted lifetime hiring preferences to veterans in public employment, a law that was challenged by women who scored higher than veteran applicants on civil service exams but were not hired. The plaintiffs argued that this preference constituted sex discrimination, particularly given that a vast majority of veterans were men.
In a narrow decision, the Supreme Court found that the statute did not discriminate against women, reasoning that it also disadvantaged non-veteran men, thus rendering the law neutral on its face. This ruling highlighted the distinction between disproportionate impact and intentional discrimination, a key aspect of equal protection analysis. Dissenting justices raised concerns about the significant negative impact on women and questioned whether the state had sufficiently justified the law without acknowledging gender considerations. The case remains a pivotal reference point in discussions surrounding affirmative action and employment equity, particularly in the context of how laws can affect different demographic groups in varying ways.
Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney
Date: June 5, 1979
Citation: 442 U.S. 256
Issues: Employment discrimination; sex discrimination
Significance: The Supreme Court upheld veterans’ hiring preferences in public employment as nondiscriminatory toward women.
A Massachusetts statute gave absolute lifetime preference for veterans for hiring in public employment despite the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. When some women were not hired despite having higher scores than veterans on civil service examinations, they claimed sex discrimination. Although 98 percent of Massachusetts veterans were men and the veterans’ preference applied to 60 percent of the jobs in the state, the Supreme Court, by a vote of seven to two, found that the law did not discriminate against women because it also affected men who were not veterans, making the law neutral on its face, not gender based. In short, disproportionate impact was not the equivalent of discrimination. Justices Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan, Jr., dissented because the impact on women was so great and because the state had not met a burden of showing that gender considerations had played no role in the legislative decisions.
