On-the-Job Bias Decision Reversed : Way Eased for Employers to Refute Discrimination Claims

The Supreme Court today dealt a blow to minorities who say they are victims of on-the-job discrimination, making it easier for employers to refute claims of racial bias based on statistical evidence.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices overturned a ruling that favored Filipinos, Alaska natives and Asians employed at Alaska salmon canneries.

The justices ordered further lower court hearings in the case.

In a sharply worded dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the ruling “retreats” from 18 years of court decisions aimed at helping minorities who are victimized by discrimination that may be unintentional.

Today’s ruling said when minorities allege that statistics show they are victims of bias, employers only have the burden of producing evidence that there is a legitimate reason for apparently neutral business practices.

The burden of proving the practice is non-discriminatory--of persuading a jury there is no bias--does not shift to the employer, Justice Byron R. White said for the court.

“The plaintiff bears the burden of disproving an employer’s assertion that the adverse employment action or practice was based solely on a legitimate neutral consideration,” White said.

Furthermore, the court limited the statistical evidence that minorities can use to prove discrimination.

White said an absence of minority group members in skilled jobs is not evidence of bias if the absence reflects “a dearth of qualified nonwhite applications for reasons that are not (the employer’s) fault.”

White said that without protection for employers, their only recourse to eliminate racial imbalance in their work forces would be unlawful quotas.

In another action today, the court ruled that a homeless-rights group, the Community for Creative Non-Violence, does not own exclusively the copyright to a sculpture it commissioned an artist to create. The 9-0 decision--a victory for artists and authors--ordered further lower court hearings to determine whether CCNV and its founder, Mitch Snyder, may share in the copyright of a work by sculptor James Earl Reid of Baltimore titled “Third World America” that depicts the plight of the homeless.