Justice Is Served--Again

For nearly a decade now the U.S. Supreme Court has struggled with legal questions raised by the use of affirmative action to remedy past inequities in employment. The issue has always been the same: Is hiring or promoting someone because of his or her race or sex in compliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or is it a violation of the act, which bars discrimination on the basis of these criteria?

In matters of race discrimination the court has increasingly ruled in recent years that employers who take race into account in making job decisions are acting in accordance with the law. On Wednesday the court for the first time addressed the question when it comes to discrimination on the basis of sex.

The case involved Diane Joyce, a female employee who was promoted by the Santa Clara County Transportation Agency over a male employee who was arguably more qualified, and the justices ruled, 6 to 3, that the agency’s action was appropriate and within the law even though no specific policy of discrimination had been followed. The fact that no women had ever held the position that Joyce was being promoted to was proof enough of the inherent sex discrimination that had become part of the fabric of that workplace.

Furthermore, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. argued, the transportation agency’s affirmative-action plan under which Joyce was promoted did not trammel on the rights of male employees or create an absolute bar to their advancement. “ No persons are automatically excluded from consideration,” Brennan wrote. “ All persons are able to have their qualifications weighed against those of other applicants.”

Once again the court has properly ignored the position of the Reagan Administration, which asked that this affirmative-action plan be struck down as discriminating against men. Once again Brennan has fashioned a coalition of justices who believe that the time has come to undo generations of discrimination that consigned women to lowly jobs and kept them there. Once again the court is making the law serve justice.