433 U.S. 321 (1977)
Dianne Rawlinson applied for employment as a correctional counselor trainee with the Alabama Board of Corrections.1 At the time of her application she was a 22-year-old college graduate whose major course of study had been correctional psychology. Her application was rejected because she failed to meet the minimum 120-pound weight requirement established by an Alabama statute, which also sets a height minimum of 5 feet 2 inches.2
Following the rejection of her application, Rawlinson filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and received a right-to-sue letter.3 She then filed a complaint in the District Court on behalf of herself and other similarly situated women, challenging the statutory height and weight minima.4 While the suit was pending, the Alabama Board of Corrections adopted Administrative Regulation 204, establishing gender criteria for assigning correctional counselors to contact positions in maximum-security institutions.5 Rawlinson amended her class-action complaint to add a challenge to Regulation 204.6
Alabama's prisons are segregated on the basis of sex, with four major all-male maximum-security penitentiaries featuring large dormitories with communal showers and toilets.7 The Board also operates the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women and other facilities.8 A correctional counselor's primary duty is to maintain security and control of the inmates by continually supervising and observing their activities.9 At the time of the litigation the Board employed 435 people in correctional counselor positions, 56 of whom were women, with 336 of the positions located in the four maximum-security male penitentiaries.10
A three-judge Federal District Court for the Middle District of Alabama decided in Rawlinson's favor in Mieth v. Dothard.11 The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction of the appeal from the District Court's judgment.12 The record showed that conditions in the Alabama prisons included rampant violence and a jungle atmosphere, with sex offenders scattered throughout the facilities. No attempt was made to classify or segregate inmates according to their offense or level of dangerousness due to inadequate staff and facilities.13
Whether Alabama's statutory height and weight requirements for correctional counselor positions disproportionately exclude women from employment opportunities?14
To establish a prima facie case of discrimination under Title VII, a plaintiff need only show that the facially neutral standards in question select applicants for hire in a significantly discriminatory pattern.15 Once it is thus shown that the employment standards are discriminatory in effect, the employer must meet the burden of showing that any given requirement has a manifest relationship to the employment in question.16
Yes. The District Court found that the 5'2" requirement would operate to exclude 33.29% of the women in the United States between the ages of 18-79, while excluding only 1.28% of men between the same ages.17 The 120-pound weight restriction would exclude 22.29% of the women and 2.35% of the men in this age group.18 When the height and weight restrictions are combined, Alabama's statutory standards would exclude 41.13% of the female population while excluding less than 1% of the male population.19
Women hold only 12.9% of correctional counselor positions despite comprising 36.89% of the labor force.20 These facts establish a prima facie case of disparate impact on women.21
The statutory height and weight requirements disproportionately exclude women from employment opportunities in violation of Title VII.22
Related opinions on this issue
Justice White dissented from the judgment affirming the District Court on the height and weight issue.23 He expressed unwillingness to believe that the percentage of women applying or interested in applying for jobs as prison guards in Alabama approximates the percentage of women either in the national or state population.24 Without a more satisfactory record on this issue, he could not conclude that appellee Rawlinson had made out a prima facie case for the invalidity of the restrictions.25
Whether the Alabama Board of Corrections demonstrated that the height and weight requirements are job related?26
If the plaintiff establishes a prima facie case of disparate impact, the employer must show that the challenged requirements are job related by demonstrating a manifest relationship to the employment in question.27 If the employer proves that the challenged requirements are job related, the plaintiff may then show that other selection devices without a similar discriminatory effect would also serve the employer's legitimate interest in efficient and trustworthy workmanship.28
No. The appellants produced no evidence correlating the height and weight requirements with the requisite amount of strength thought essential to good job performance as a correctional counselor.2930 They failed to offer evidence of any kind in specific justification of the statutory standards.31 Although the primary duty of a correctional counselor is to maintain security and control of the inmates by continually supervising and observing their activities, the appellants did not validate a test measuring strength directly.32 If the job-related quality identified is bona fide, the purpose could be achieved by adopting and validating a test for applicants that measures strength directly, but nothing in the present record even approaches such a measurement.33
The Alabama Board of Corrections did not demonstrate that the height and weight requirements are job related.34
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by The Chief Justice And Mr. Justice Blackmun
Justice Rehnquist concurred in the result that the District Court was not in error in holding the statutory height and weight requirements invalidated by Title VII.35 He viewed affirmance as essentially dictated by the peculiarly limited factual and legal justifications offered below by appellants on behalf of the statutory requirements.36 He noted that the District Court was confronted with only one suggested job-related reason for the qualification, that of strength, and that appellants did not urge that an equally job-related qualification for prison guards is the appearance of strength.37
Whether being male is a bona fide occupational qualification for contact positions in Alabama's maximum-security male penitentiaries under Regulation 204?38
Under Title VII, sex-based discrimination is permitted only in those instances where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise.39 The exception is an extremely narrow one, and the employer must show that the essence of the business operation would be undermined by not hiring members of one sex exclusively.40
Yes. Regulation 204 explicitly discriminates against women on the basis of their sex by establishing gender criteria for assigning correctional counselors to contact positions in maximum-security institutions.41 The environment in Alabama's penitentiaries is a peculiarly inhospitable one for human beings of whatever sex, characterized by rampant violence and a jungle atmosphere.42 Because of inadequate staff and facilities, no attempt is made to classify or segregate inmates according to their offense or level of dangerousness, so that the estimated 20% of the male prisoners who are sex offenders are scattered throughout the penitentiaries' dormitory facilities.43
In this environment of violence and disorganization, a woman's relative ability to maintain order in a male, maximum-security, unclassified penitentiary could be directly reduced by her womanhood.44 There is a basis in fact for expecting that sex offenders who have criminally assaulted women in the past would be moved to do so again if access to women were established within the prison.45 There would also be a real risk that other inmates, deprived of a normal heterosexual environment, would assault women guards because they were women.46 The employee's very womanhood would thus directly undermine her capacity to provide the security that is the essence of a correctional counselor's responsibility.47
Being male is a bona fide occupational qualification for contact positions in Alabama's maximum-security male penitentiaries under Regulation 204.48
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Mr. Justice Brennan
Justice Marshall concurred in the analysis of the height and weight requirements but dissented from the Court's application of the bfoq exception.49 He argued that the analysis sounds distressingly like saying two wrongs make a right by relying on the barbaric and inhumane conditions in Alabama prisons that violate the Constitution.50 He noted that there is simply no evidence in the record to show that women guards would create any danger to security in Alabama prisons significantly greater than that which already exists.51
He concluded that the decision perpetuates one of the most insidious of the old myths about women as seductive sexual objects.52 The effect is to punish women because their very presence might provoke sexual assaults.53