1. Because of the residency requirements, what percentage of blacks were effectively barred from consideration for employment by the villages?
2. Assess the fairness of the villages’ recruiting procedures.
3. Did the court agree that the villages had presented valid justification for their residency requirements?

[These actions were filed by the United States in December 1985, alleging a pattern or practice of unlawful discrimination in employment against black persons by the villages of Elmwood Park and Melrose Park in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The United States moved for summary judgment on the issues of liability and prospective relief. The villages of Elmwood Park and Melrose Park are near the western boundary of the city of Chicago and are located within Cook County.
According to the 1980 census, the labor force for Cook County is 20.7 percent black and for the Chicago standard metropolitan statistical area, it is 16.2 percent black. No blacks live in Elmwood Park, and 24 blacks live in Melrose Park. Both villages have a residency requirement of at least three years for police and firefighter applicants. The purposes of the requirement were said to be to "help its own" in granting employment opportunities and to maintain pride in the community through hiring individuals who live there. Most recruiting is done on a word-of-mouth basis.]
MARSHALL, D. J….
… In Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 431 (1971) the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, "proscribes not only overt discrimination, but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation." Thus, employment practices that are shown to have a discriminatory impact on a group protected under Title VII, notwithstanding an absence of discriminatory intent, are prohibited unless shown to have a "manifest relationship to the employment in question." Id. at 432.

As the Court went on to say in Griggs, "Good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment practices … which operate as 'built-in headwinds' for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability." …

In this case, the undisputed facts show that the practices of Elmwood Park and Melrose Park have had an overwhelmingly discriminatory impact. Elmwood Park has no black persons in its resident civilian labor force. Melrose Park has 24 out of 11,000 persons. Their durational residence requirements for police officer and firefighter applicants exclude all black persons residing in Cook County and the metropolitan statistical area from employment in those categories in Elmwood Park and Melrose Park. The "philosophy" of the defendants to favor resident applicants over non-resident applicants for all other positions similarly disfavors all black persons in [the] labor market from employment. These practices are precisely the kind of "artificial, arbitrary and unnecessary barriers" which are "unrelated to measuring job capability" that Congress prohibited in enacting Title VII. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., supra, at 431, 432. The effect of these durational residency requirements and the "philosophy" of favoring resident applicants over non-resident applicants reduces the proportion of blacks in the relevant labor force from approximately 13% and 18% (the percentages of black persons employed privately in the communities) to zero. Thus, all black persons are effectively barred from consideration for employment by the defendants. Unless these practices are necessary to the efficient operation of the defendants, they are unlawful. None of the reasons advanced by the defendants validate the requirements. Both defendants seek to help "our own." But helping "our own" only exacerbates the situation when all of "our own" are white. Local 53 Asbestos Workers v. Vogler, 407 F.2d 1047 (5th Cir. 1969).
"Pride in the community" is advanced as a reason. Perhaps there is a modicum of justification which requires residency for incumbent employees, i.e., after employment is effected, but we are at a loss to comprehend community pride as a valid condition precedent to employment. We note that there is no claim that a resident could perform the job more efficiently.
In addition to their use of durational residence requirements for police and firefighter applicants and their preferences for residence for all other village jobs, the defendants use "word-of-mouth" as the sole method of recruiting applicants for municipal vacancies.
This is an additional barrier to black employment. It appears that there are no blacks living in Elmwood Park and only a handful in Melrose Park. In these circumstances, local networking will not convey information of job opportunities to non-whites. A word-of-mouth recruitment system limits information about job openings to the friends and relatives of incumbent employees and given the all-white nature of the defendants' work forces, disproportionately deprives qualified black applicants of the information they need to apply for village jobs.

In short, the employment requirements and techniques used by the defendant Villages have had the effect of excluding all blacks from consideration for employment and actual employment in the two communities. The justifications advanced by defendants for these patently discriminatory employment practices are no justification at all. Indeed, if anything, they call into question the good faith of the defendants. The United States of America is entitled to summary judgment under the disparate impact analysis on the issues of liability and prospective relief….
It is so ordered.