1. What was the question before the Supreme Court?

2. What was the objective of Congress in the enactment of Title VII?

3. Would the Court order the case against the employer to be dismissed if it found that the employer had adopted the diploma and test requirements without anyintention to discriminate against minority employees?

4. As a result of the Griggs decision, may employers insist that both minority and white job applicants meet the applicable job qualifications as determined through the use of testing or measuring procedures?

Griggs and other black employees at Duke Power Company’s Dan River Station challenged Duke Power’s requirements of a high school diploma and passing standardized general intelligence tests in order to transfer to more desirable “inside jobs.” The district court and Court of Appeals found no violation of Title VII because Duke Power did not adopt the diploma and test requirements with the purpose of intentionally discriminating against black employees. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

JUDICIAL OPINION

BURGER, C. J.… The objective of Congress in the enactment of Title VII is plain from the language of the statute. It was to achieve equality of employment opportunities and remove barriers that have operated in the past to favor an identifiable group of white employees over other employees. Under the Act, practices, procedures, or tests neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms of intent, cannot be maintained if they operate to “freeze” the status quo of prior discriminatory employment practices.

… In short, the Act does not command that any person be hired simply because he was formerly the subject of discrimination, or because he is a member of a minority group. Discriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed. What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification.

Congress has now provided that tests or criteria for employment or promotion may not provide equality of opportunity merely in the sense of the fabled offer of milk to the stork and the fox. On the contrary, Congress has now required that the posture and condition of the job-seeker be taken into account. It has—to resort again to the fable—provided that the vessel in which the milk is proffered be one all seekers can use. The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.

The touch-stone is business necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited. On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used. Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job-performance ability. Rather, a vice president of the Company testified, the requirements were instituted on the Company’s judgment that they generally would improve the overall quality of the work force.

The evidence, however, shows that employees who have not completed high school or taken the tests have continued to perform satisfactorily and make progress in departments for which the high school and test criteria are now used.…

The Court of Appeals held that the Company had adopted the diploma and test requirements without any “intention to discriminate against Negro employees.” We do not suggest that either theDistrict Court or the Court of Appeals erred in examining the employer’s intent; but good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeememployment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as “built-in headwinds” for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability.

The Company’s lack of discriminatory intent is suggested by special efforts to help the undereducated employees through Company financing of two-thirds the cost of tuition for high school training. But Congress directed the thrust of …………………………