Please read the case study titled NAACP v. North Hudson regional Fire & Rescue." on page 119. Carefully analyze the opinions/dissention and actions of the District Court and the appellate courts,

Opinion by Circuit Judge Hardiman: This appeal arises under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in 1991. At issue is the legality of a residency requirement for firefighter candidates imposed by North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue (North Hudson), a fire department comprising five New Jersey municipalities. The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey held the residency requirement invalid because it has a disparate impact on African-American applicants. North Hudson . . . appeal[s] the District Courts judgment. * * * As is common practice in New Jersey, the [civil service] eligibility lists created for North Hudson include only candidates who lived in one of its five member municipalities when they took the written exam (Residents-Only List). Accordingly, North Hudson never sees the names or scores of ineligible nonresident applicants. * * * After a candidate is selected from the Residents-Only List, North Hudson battalion or deputy chiefs verify the candidates residency at the time of hiring. Once the candidate has been hired, however, he may live anywhere; some North Hudson firefighters and officers live in neighboring counties or as far as sixty miles away. As of 2000, the population of North Hudsons member municipalities was 69.6% Hispanic, 22.9% white non-Hispanic, and 3.4% African American. In 2008, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reported that North Hudson employed 323 full-time employees, including 302 firefighters. North Hudsons firefighter ranks included 240 white non-Hispanics, fifty-eight Hispanics, and two African Americans. * * * In adjudicating the parties motions for summary judgment, [District] Judge Debevoise conducted an extremely thorough analysis of the facts and expert reports. Because disparate-impact claims depend heavily on statistical proof of discriminatory effects, we review the experts findings and the District Courts conclusions at length. The NAACP Plaintiffs presented the expert report of Dr. Richard Wright to establish their prima facie case of disparate-impact discrimination. In his 2008 report, Wright identified disparities between the percentage of qualified African Americans in the relevant labor market, which he defined in several alternative ways, and the percentage of African Americans employed by North Hudson. The District Court first considered Wrights definition of the relevant labor market. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2003 the average daily commute was twenty-four minutes nationally and twenty-nine minutes for North Hudson residents. By performing a geographic information system analysis, Wright concluded that most people living within a ten-mile radius of North Hudsons center would have no more than a twenty-nine-minute commute. Wright also opined that North Hudson could reasonably be expected to draw its employees from across New Jersey because state-regulated workers tend to search for jobs statewide. Wright concluded that the appropriate labor market from which North Hudson may be expected to draw its protective service personnel is either the whole state or the neighboring three-county area. * * * The District Court next considered whether Wrights comparisons demonstrated the kind of substantial statistical proof and causal relationship necessary to establish a prima facie disparate-impact claim. To do so, Wright compared the proportion of African Americans employed by North Hudson with the percentages of African Americans employed in full time protective service positions in the Tri-County Area and in New Jersey. The parties disputedand continue to disputewhether looking to the ratio of African Americans in protective service jobs provides an accurate prediction of their expected presence in firefighting jobs. Although Wright parenthetically noted that protective service jobs consist of mainly police officers [and] firefighters, a 2000 list of North Hudsons Protective Service Occupations codes suggests that this category may also include a substantial number of nonanalogous positions, including crossing guards, gaming surveillance officers, private detectives and investigators, animal control workers, parking enforcement workers, and fish and game wardens. Other positions with protective service codes, like lifeguards, transit and railroad police, and bailiffs and correctional officers, may involve some skills similar to those required for firefighting, but they unquestionably diverge in other significant ways. * * * Wrights results in this comparison were compelling. In the Tri-County Area, 37.4% of protective service positions are held by African Americans. Based on this percentage, one would expect 121 North Hudson firefighters to be African American. Similarly, 20% of protective service workers statewide are African American, so, based on that percentage, one would expect North Hudson to employ sixty-five African American firefighters. The differences of 13 and 8.76 standard deviations in these comparisons leave virtually no probability that the discrepancies are the result of chance. Wrights calculations indicated that African Americans are significantly under-represented in North Hudson. Given the near impossibility that the disparities are caused merely by chance, Wright concluded: [T]his likely results from discriminatory hiring practices. * * * In the District Courts view, Wrights statistical evidence sufficed to establish a prima facie case of disparate impact, including both substantial statistical disparities and a causal link to North Hudsons residency requirement. The District Court then searched for contravening evidence from North Hudsons own expert, but Siskins report revealed that [his] own results predict[ed] that a significant number of qualified African Americans would be eligible and qualified for employment with [North Hudson] if the labor market were expanded to the Tri-[C]ounty [A]rea. * * * The District Court next considered North Hudsons business-necessity defense and rejected it because living in North Hudson was not a mandatory minimum requirement for familiarity with local geography, swift response times, or a bilingual firefighter force and because less discriminatory alternative means of achieving these goals were apparent. * * * Nor did the residency requirement ensure that North Hudson firefighters would live in the North Hudson municipalities after they were hired. * * * Title VIIs disparate-impact provision prohibits employment practices that have the unintentional effect of discriminating based on race. The statute provides: An unlawful employment practice based on disparate impact is established . . . only if . . . a complaining party demonstrates that a respondent uses a particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and the respondent fails to demonstrate that the challenged practice is job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity[.] * * * Statistical disparities alone can raise an inference of causation, but only when those disparities are substantial and the statistical evidence is reliable. In showing statistical disparity, the relevant comparison is between the racial composition of [the at-issue jobs] and the racial composition of the qualified . . . population in the relevant labor market. * * * Wrights comparison of the proportion of African Americans employed in Tri-County Area protective service positions (37.4%) with the proportion of African Americans employed as firefighters by North Hudson (0.62%) shows a disparity that raises an inference of causation. * * * Although North Hudson now contests Wrights definition of the relevant labor market to include the Tri-County Area and even the entire state of New Jersey, it offers no alternative analysis to explain why the market should be defined more narrowly. On the other hand, as the District Court acknowledged, Wright bolstered his definition of the labor market by pointing to commute times that do not exceed the average for North Hudson residents and the tendencies of those in this type of employment to seek positions statewide. North Hudson also objects to Wrights definition of the qualified population. North Hudson points out an obvious flaw: neither the entire African American population nor the whole pool of African American state and local government employees can be considered qualified for a firefighter position. * * * But this argument is unavailing to North Hudson on appeal because the District Court agreed with Siskin on this point and instead based its summary judgment on the protective services comparison. Wrights analysis of full-time protective service employeesthough imperfect because it includes several nonanalogous positionsfairly, and as nearly as possible, approximates the pool of qualified African Americans. The full-time protective service positions are a sufficient proxy even though firefighting is a specialized job. Many of the full-time protective service positions require emergency medical training, physical fitness, calmness under pressure, and strategic decision making in emergencies. Though none of the included positionsother than firefighter, of courseencompasses the full breadth of special skills required for firefighting, the law does not demand a perfect analog. * * * Having found no error in the District Courts conclusion that the NAACP Plaintiffs proved a prima facie case of disparate impact, we turn to its rejection of North Hudsons defense that business necessity justifies the residency requirement. . . . [W]e have interpreted the business-necessity defense to apply only when an employer can show that its challenged hiring criteria define minimum qualifications for the position. Even if business necessity is shown, the plaintiff will prevail if there are less discriminatory alternative means of selecting for the crucial qualification. * * * North Hudson claimed that residency is essential to its fire department operations because it: increases the likelihood that its firefighters will be able to respond to emergencies more quickly because they will be more familiar with the buildings and streets in the served community; . . . increases the number of Spanish-speaking firefighters in a department that serves a 69% Hispanic population; and fosters community pride. We have no quarrel with the notion that a critical aspect of firefighting is the ability to respond quickly and that familiarity with the streets and buildings of a locale is important to achieving that goal. But this valid point cannot be reconciled with the fact that North Hudson does not require its firefighters to reside in the North Hudson municipalities after they are hired. In fact, in 2008, only 34% to 36% of North Hudson firefighters were residents. As for employing a certain number of Spanish-speaking firefighters in a region that is 69% Hispanic, this is a plausible justification in the abstract. But North Hudson failed to establish that the residency requirement leads to a greater number of Spanish-speaking firefighters. Rather, this purported justification is a conceivable basis, which is insufficient to invoke the business-necessity defense. Moreover, as the District Court noted, there are nondiscriminatory ways to ensure the hiring of Spanish-speaking firefighters. Rather than seek out Spanish speakers by making the imprecise assumption that North Hudson residents are more likely to speak Spanish, North Hudson could, and actually does, seek out bilingual candidates. Finally, as . . . the business-necessity standard itself make clear, community pride is not a sufficient justification for a discriminatory hiring practice. In sum, the District Court properly concluded that North Hudsons purported business-necessity arguments fail. They are not tied to minimum firefighter qualifications in North Hudson and, in some cases, less discriminatory alternatives are available. * * * Please be thoughtful in answering the following questions: 1. What were the legal issues in this case? What did the appeals court decide? (No less than 150 words) 2. How should the "relevant labor market" be defined in a case like this? (No less than 50 words) 3. What was the evidence that the residency requirement has disparagement on African Americans? (No less than 75 words)