![]() Therefore, you might think the Court would have ruled in Duke Power’s favor. It provides that it is legal for an employer to use a “professionally designed ability test” so long as it is not “designed, intended or used to discriminate….” A state official had ruled that the company’s testing was illegal under state law because it was “unfair to disadvantaged groups.”īill sponsors, including Senator Humphrey, replied that nothing in the language of the statute could be construed that way, but to head off objections, they included a new section, 703(h). During Senate debate on the bill, opponents maintained that it could be used to attack employment testing, which had in fact occurred in a case in Illinois involving Motorola. Whites who did not meet the qualifications were treated no differently.įurthermore, company’s lawyers argued, the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act clearly showed that it was not written to interfere with bona fide aptitude testing, which was widely used in business at that time. It was intended to screen out workers who were probably less capable and reliable. The Civil Rights Act made it unlawful for any employer to “limit, segregate, or classify employees or applicants in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Its policy on education and testing, they argued, did deprive them of employment opportunities because of race.ĭuke Power’s defense was that its employment policy was not intended to deprive any person or group of employment opportunities. The plaintiffs argued that Duke Power’s requirements for promotion were illegal. Instead of either taking the company up on its offer to pay for workers who wanted to complete their high school educations or taking the tests again, he filed suit, alleging that the company’s policy violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Griggs had not graduated from high school and did not earn passing scores on the tests. Under a company policy adopted in 1965, no worker would be considered for higher paying jobs with greater responsibility unless they had either earned a high school diploma or could pass two tests: the Wonderlic Personnel Test and the Bennett Mechanical Composition Test. The case arose when Willie Griggs and fourteen other black employees of Duke Power Company sought promotions. Duke Power, had a lot to do with it, by giving employers a strong incentive to use educational credentials as a proxy for aptitude testing.
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