Petitioner
Wards Cove Packing Company, Inc., et al.
Respondent
Frank Atonio, et al.
Petitioner's Claim
That an earlier court judgment showing discrimination though "disparate impact" was incorrect.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Douglas M. Fryer
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Abraham A. Arditi
Justices for the Court
Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Byron R. White (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
5 June 1989
Decision
A racially segregated workforce does not show discrimination on the part of the employer if that workforce is a reflection of the pool of applicants, andthus is not in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Furthermore, in such cases the plaintiff, not the employer, must show proof that a specific hiring or personnel policy is responsible for an unfairly segregated workforce.
Significance
The decision was seen as pro-business--favoring a deregulated corporate climate by making it harder for employees to bring suit against their employers--and also marked a new era for the Court, now with a block of conservative justices on the bench.
In the late 1960s, Frank Atonio filed suit, along with several other co-workers at an Alaskan fish cannery, charging that the practices of their employer,Wards Cove Packing Company, hindered their ability to obtain promotions andbetter-paying jobs within the company. Atonio, a Samoan, and the others--alsononwhites--held the more arduous unskilled canning factory jobs, while at the company's offices most of the skilled positions were filled by whites. A majority of the cannery workers were Native Alaskan or Filipino, and they ate and bunked separately from the office workers; jobs were even described with derogatory racial epithets. Almost all of the office positions offered betterpay, and more pleasant working conditions. An aptitude test for all job candidates, a common practice, was one hiring practice that Wards Cove used in personnel decisions, and Atonio and the others charged that these kinds of testsserved to segregate the workforce along color lines.
Title VII
Since the passage of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964, many employment discrimination suits have achieved legal victory under Title VII of the act, which barred discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin. A liberal Supreme Court, weighing similar employment-discrimination suits, had ruled throughout the 1960s and 1970s that even though employers may not have intent to discriminate, the presence of such barriers as aptitude tests or educational requirements nevertheless constitute a violation of the act. In legal terms, this was known as the "disparateimpact" theory--even though a company may not intend to bar protected groupsfrom certain jobs, there may be tests or practices that prevent minorities from enjoying a full range of social and economic opportunities.
Throughout the liberal years of the Court, one cornerstone of this legal issue had remained constant: employers charged with violation of the Title VII statute were obliged to prove in court that tests or other practices were necessary to the functioning of the business. This forced companies under fire tohire consultants (often at great expense) to conduct statistical studies andprove that weeding out applicants via aptitude tests, for instance, was integral to the demands of the job. One significant decision had come in 1971 withGriggs v. Duke Power Company, in which a unanimous ruling, written byChief Justice Warren Burger, declared that the standardized employment testshad no relevance to the job in question.
New Era
Griggs was considered a precedent-setting ruling, in part because it broadly interpreted the Title VII statute and placed the burden of proving theabsence of discriminatory policy on the employer, not the employee or the protected group filing suit. Many companies, fearful of becoming defendants insuch suits, reviewed the stratification of their workforce (a higher percentage of minorities in entry-level, low-wage jobs, for instance) and began to revise hiring and promotion practices to provide more opportunities for protected groups--in effect, implementing their own affirmative-action policies.
In the case of the Wards Cove employees, which dated back to 1974, a districtcourt had rejected the plaintiff's claims, contending that a union hiring agreement was responsible for the predominance of nonwhite workers in cannery jobs. A higher court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, overturned that decision in 1987, saying that the plaintiffs had indeed shown that "disparate impact" had occurred through Wards Cove hiring practices and that the company and another cannery named in the suit were indeed obligated to prove through statistical evidence that employment tests were relevant to the jobs in question. The companies appealed the decision, and the case came before the SupremeCourt during the 1988-89 term.
New Majority
It was a conservative Court that ruled on Wards Cove. President RonaldReagan, taking office in 1980 and re-elected for a second term in 1984, hadachieved one of the goals of his "Reagan Revolution": to finalize the turn tothe right that the Court had taken in the early 1970s. Reagan had unusual presidential fortune in the opportunity to appoint several Supreme Court justices upon the retirements of senior members, and he did so with conservative judges who sometimes faced heated questioning in Senate confirmation hearings.The Reagan appointments were Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981, Antonin Scalia in 1986, and Anthony M. Kennedy in 1988; in 1986 the president elevated Justice William H. Rehnquist, an appointee of Richard Nixon and a staunch conservative, to Chief Justice. With Byron H. White, on the Court since 1962, the justices now wielded a majority over their more liberal-leaning colleagues like William J. Brennan, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.
In June of 1989, the Court announced their 5-4 vote on Wards Cove. Themajority opinion, written by White, stated that the mere presence of racialimbalance within a workforce does not show a violation of Title VII. Instead,in order to prove that "disparate impact" discrimination had occurred, Whitestated, plaintiff employees must compare the racial makeup of the company with the demographics of the qualified applicants in the area. Furthermore, theopinion of the Court declared, employees have to show that a specificcompany policy keeps the workforce unfairly segregated. The justices reversed the ninth court decision, and sent it back for further trial at the district court level.
Pro-Business Climate
Legal analysts asserted that the decision was a flexing of conservative muscle that negated an array of significant civil-rights decisions that favored plaintiffs in the area of discrimination litigation over the last two decades.In effect, it seemed to repudiate Griggs and place a large and deliberate obstacle to employee suits against employers. To many, it appeared to invalidate the necessity of affirmative-action quotas in the workplace, whethercourt-imposed or voluntary. On the other hand, White's opinion pointed out that there had been "misunderstanding" in the Court's previous interpretationsof the Civil Rights Act in past decisions. The Wards Cove decision wasalso consistent with the Republican tone of American politics during the 1980s, through which a thriving, unregulated business climate was given preference.
The Wards Cove case incensed Democratic lawmakers. With the 1991 CivilRights Act, signed by President George Bush, the Griggs precedent, forcing much of the burden of proof onto the employer, became law. However, itdid uphold one part of the Wards Cove decision in requiring that the plaintiff employee had to identify a specific company practice in their challenge.
Related Cases
What Is White Collar Crime?
The term white collar crime was first introduced by sociologist Edwin H. Sutherland, during a speech before the American Sociological Association in 1939.He defined white-collar crime as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation." That means that the crime must be related to the job or occupation, and is committed by someone in a position of status within the company. Typically, murder manslaughter and robbery would not be considered white-collar crimes since they are notapart of routine work procedures.
The U.S. Attorney General's Office defined white collar crime in a annual report as "illegal acts that use deceit and concealment--rather than applicationor threat of physical force or violence--to obtain money, property, or service; to avoid the payment or loss of money; or to secure a business or personal advantage."
Sources
Criminal Law. Fourth Edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Wards Cove Packing Company, Inc., et al.
Respondent
Frank Atonio, et al.
Petitioner's Claim
That an earlier court judgment showing discrimination though "disparate impact" was incorrect.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Douglas M. Fryer
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Abraham A. Arditi
Justices for the Court
Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Byron R. White (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
5 June 1989
Decision
A racially segregated workforce does not show discrimination on the part of the employer if that workforce is a reflection of the pool of applicants, andthus is not in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Furthermore, in such cases the plaintiff, not the employer, must show proof that a specific hiring or personnel policy is responsible for an unfairly segregated workforce.
Significance
The decision was seen as pro-business--favoring a deregulated corporate climate by making it harder for employees to bring suit against their employers--and also marked a new era for the Court, now with a block of conservative justices on the bench.
In the late 1960s, Frank Atonio filed suit, along with several other co-workers at an Alaskan fish cannery, charging that the practices of their employer,Wards Cove Packing Company, hindered their ability to obtain promotions andbetter-paying jobs within the company. Atonio, a Samoan, and the others--alsononwhites--held the more arduous unskilled canning factory jobs, while at the company's offices most of the skilled positions were filled by whites. A majority of the cannery workers were Native Alaskan or Filipino, and they ate and bunked separately from the office workers; jobs were even described with derogatory racial epithets. Almost all of the office positions offered betterpay, and more pleasant working conditions. An aptitude test for all job candidates, a common practice, was one hiring practice that Wards Cove used in personnel decisions, and Atonio and the others charged that these kinds of testsserved to segregate the workforce along color lines.
Title VII
Since the passage of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964, many employment discrimination suits have achieved legal victory under Title VII of the act, which barred discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin. A liberal Supreme Court, weighing similar employment-discrimination suits, had ruled throughout the 1960s and 1970s that even though employers may not have intent to discriminate, the presence of such barriers as aptitude tests or educational requirements nevertheless constitute a violation of the act. In legal terms, this was known as the "disparateimpact" theory--even though a company may not intend to bar protected groupsfrom certain jobs, there may be tests or practices that prevent minorities from enjoying a full range of social and economic opportunities.
Throughout the liberal years of the Court, one cornerstone of this legal issue had remained constant: employers charged with violation of the Title VII statute were obliged to prove in court that tests or other practices were necessary to the functioning of the business. This forced companies under fire tohire consultants (often at great expense) to conduct statistical studies andprove that weeding out applicants via aptitude tests, for instance, was integral to the demands of the job. One significant decision had come in 1971 withGriggs v. Duke Power Company, in which a unanimous ruling, written byChief Justice Warren Burger, declared that the standardized employment testshad no relevance to the job in question.
New Era
Griggs was considered a precedent-setting ruling, in part because it broadly interpreted the Title VII statute and placed the burden of proving theabsence of discriminatory policy on the employer, not the employee or the protected group filing suit. Many companies, fearful of becoming defendants insuch suits, reviewed the stratification of their workforce (a higher percentage of minorities in entry-level, low-wage jobs, for instance) and began to revise hiring and promotion practices to provide more opportunities for protected groups--in effect, implementing their own affirmative-action policies.
In the case of the Wards Cove employees, which dated back to 1974, a districtcourt had rejected the plaintiff's claims, contending that a union hiring agreement was responsible for the predominance of nonwhite workers in cannery jobs. A higher court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, overturned that decision in 1987, saying that the plaintiffs had indeed shown that "disparate impact" had occurred through Wards Cove hiring practices and that the company and another cannery named in the suit were indeed obligated to prove through statistical evidence that employment tests were relevant to the jobs in question. The companies appealed the decision, and the case came before the SupremeCourt during the 1988-89 term.
New Majority
It was a conservative Court that ruled on Wards Cove. President RonaldReagan, taking office in 1980 and re-elected for a second term in 1984, hadachieved one of the goals of his "Reagan Revolution": to finalize the turn tothe right that the Court had taken in the early 1970s. Reagan had unusual presidential fortune in the opportunity to appoint several Supreme Court justices upon the retirements of senior members, and he did so with conservative judges who sometimes faced heated questioning in Senate confirmation hearings.The Reagan appointments were Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981, Antonin Scalia in 1986, and Anthony M. Kennedy in 1988; in 1986 the president elevated Justice William H. Rehnquist, an appointee of Richard Nixon and a staunch conservative, to Chief Justice. With Byron H. White, on the Court since 1962, the justices now wielded a majority over their more liberal-leaning colleagues like William J. Brennan, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.
In June of 1989, the Court announced their 5-4 vote on Wards Cove. Themajority opinion, written by White, stated that the mere presence of racialimbalance within a workforce does not show a violation of Title VII. Instead,in order to prove that "disparate impact" discrimination had occurred, Whitestated, plaintiff employees must compare the racial makeup of the company with the demographics of the qualified applicants in the area. Furthermore, theopinion of the Court declared, employees have to show that a specificcompany policy keeps the workforce unfairly segregated. The justices reversed the ninth court decision, and sent it back for further trial at the district court level.
Pro-Business Climate
Legal analysts asserted that the decision was a flexing of conservative muscle that negated an array of significant civil-rights decisions that favored plaintiffs in the area of discrimination litigation over the last two decades.In effect, it seemed to repudiate Griggs and place a large and deliberate obstacle to employee suits against employers. To many, it appeared to invalidate the necessity of affirmative-action quotas in the workplace, whethercourt-imposed or voluntary. On the other hand, White's opinion pointed out that there had been "misunderstanding" in the Court's previous interpretationsof the Civil Rights Act in past decisions. The Wards Cove decision wasalso consistent with the Republican tone of American politics during the 1980s, through which a thriving, unregulated business climate was given preference.
The Wards Cove case incensed Democratic lawmakers. With the 1991 CivilRights Act, signed by President George Bush, the Griggs precedent, forcing much of the burden of proof onto the employer, became law. However, itdid uphold one part of the Wards Cove decision in requiring that the plaintiff employee had to identify a specific company practice in their challenge.
Related Cases
- Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971).
- Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229 (1976).
What Is White Collar Crime?
The term white collar crime was first introduced by sociologist Edwin H. Sutherland, during a speech before the American Sociological Association in 1939.He defined white-collar crime as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation." That means that the crime must be related to the job or occupation, and is committed by someone in a position of status within the company. Typically, murder manslaughter and robbery would not be considered white-collar crimes since they are notapart of routine work procedures.
The U.S. Attorney General's Office defined white collar crime in a annual report as "illegal acts that use deceit and concealment--rather than applicationor threat of physical force or violence--to obtain money, property, or service; to avoid the payment or loss of money; or to secure a business or personal advantage."
Sources
Criminal Law. Fourth Edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
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