Court Bars Psychological Tests in Hiring : Workplace: Appellate justices say questions on religion, sex violate job-seeker’s right to privacy. Ruling also upholds ban on employer bias against gays.

In the first ruling of its kind in California, a state appeals court has prohibited an employer from requiring job applicants to take psychological tests, finding that personal questions about religion and sexual orientation violate the right to privacy.

In the decision, the three-judge panel also held that state law prohibits private employers from discriminating against homosexuals. Some state officials, including Gov. Pete Wilson, had already concluded that the law bars such bias. Last month, in vetoing a bill prohibiting job discrimination against gays, Wilson said new legislation was unnecessary because of existing laws.

The appeals court, in a decision made public Monday, unanimously ordered that a preliminary injunction be issued to bar Target Stores, a department store chain, from administering the psychological tests to people seeking employment as security guards.

The state constitutional guarantee of privacy protects both a job applicant and a jobholder from being forced to answer questions about religious, sexual and other personal views, the court said. Target had failed to show that the questions asked were sufficiently related to the job, it said.

“While Target unquestionably has an interest in employing emotionally stable persons to be (security guards), testing applicants about their religious beliefs and sexual orientation does not further this interest,” Appellate Justice Timothy A. Reardon wrote for the court.

The ruling came in one of the first legal challenges in the country to psychological testing in the workplace. Federal law bars the use of polygraphs, or lie-detectors, and some employers have turned to psychological tests to screen employees.

The panel did not flatly bar all psychological tests, but said questions of a personal nature must be justified by a “compelling interest” by employers--a highly difficult legal standard to meet. The court suggested, but did not declare, that such an interest might be found in testing for police, pilots and nuclear power plant operators.

The ruling was hailed by Laurence F. Pulgram of San Francisco, a cooperating attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “This tells employers they can’t inquire willy-nilly into private affairs that are not related to the job,” he said.

Robert F. Millman of Los Angeles, an attorney for Target Stores, said the ruling would be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

George Hite, a vice president for the Minneapolis-based firm, said the tests are widely used by police agencies to detect emotional instability.

Target Stores required the tests for 300 security posts among 20,000 California employee positions to eliminate guard applicants who might pose risks, Hite said.

The tests involved 700 true or false questions, among them:

* I believe in the second coming of Christ.

* I believe there is a devil and a hell in afterlife.

* I am very strongly attracted by members of my own sex.

* I have never indulged in any unusual sex practices.

The case arose from a lawsuit filed by Sibi Soroka of Lafayette and other applicants required to take the tests for security guard jobs with Target in 1989.

Reardon took issue with another decision by an appellate panel in a separate case that approved drug tests for job applicants to the Times Mirror Co., which publishes the Los Angeles Times. In that decision, the panel upheld such tests, in part because they were administered as part of a screening procedure. But Reardon concluded that privacy protections apply to both applicants and jobholders.

In Monday’s decision, the appeals court also pointed to a 1979 ruling by the state Supreme Court barring public employers from bias against homosexuals.