401 U.S. 424 (1971)
The petitioners, thirteen Negro employees at Duke Power Company's Dan River Steam Station in Draper, North Carolina, brought this action against the company.1 At the time the suit was filed, the station employed ninety-five workers, fourteen of whom were Negroes.2 Before July 2, 1965, the company had confined Negro employees to the Labor Department, where the highest paying positions earned less than the lowest paying jobs in the Coal Handling, Operations, Maintenance, and Laboratory and Test departments, which employed only white workers.3
In 1955 the company began requiring a high school diploma for initial assignment to any department other than Labor and for transfers from Coal Handling to the inside departments.4 After abandoning its explicit racial restrictions in 1965, the company extended the high school requirement to transfers from the Labor Department.5 On July 2, 1965, the company further required new employees and transferees to achieve satisfactory scores on the Wonderlic Personnel Test and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test in addition to holding a high school diploma.6 The company allowed incumbent employees lacking a diploma to transfer by passing these two tests beginning in September 1965.7
White employees hired before the high school requirement continued to perform their duties and receive promotions in the operating departments.8 The tests were not intended to measure the ability to perform particular jobs, and the required scores matched the national median for high school graduates.910 The District Court determined that the company had ended its prior policy of overt racial discrimination.11 The Court of Appeals reviewed the case and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.12
Whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits an employer from requiring a high school education or passage of a standardized general intelligence test as a condition of employment or transfer when neither standard is shown to be significantly related to successful job performance?13
The objective of Congress in the enactment of Title VII is plain from the language of the statute.14 It was to achieve equality of employment opportunities and remove barriers that have operated in the past to favor an identifiable group of white employees over other employees.15 Under the Act, practices, procedures, or tests neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms of intent, cannot be maintained if they operate to freeze the status quo of prior discriminatory employment practices.16 The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.17 The touchstone is business necessity.18 If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited.19
Yes. The petitioners, thirteen Negro employees at Duke Power Company's Dan River Steam Station, challenged the company's requirements of a high school diploma and satisfactory scores on the Wonderlic Personnel Test and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test for jobs outside the Labor Department.20 Neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used.21 Both were adopted without meaningful study of their relationship to job-performance ability.22
The evidence shows that employees who have not completed high school or taken the tests have continued to perform satisfactorily and make progress in departments for which the high school and test criteria are now used.23 The promotion record of present employees who would not be able to meet the new criteria suggests the possibility that the requirements may not be needed.24 This holds even for the limited purpose of preserving the avowed policy of advancement within the Company.25
An employer is prohibited by Title VII from requiring a high school education or a standardized general intelligence test as a condition of employment or transfer when neither standard is shown to be significantly related to successful job performance.26
Whether such requirements violate Title VII when they operate to disqualify Negroes at a substantially higher rate than white applicants and the jobs in question had formerly been filled only by white employees pursuant to a longstanding practice of racial preference?27
What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification.28 In North Carolina, 1960 census statistics show that, while 34% of white males had completed high school, only 12% of Negro males had done so.29 Similarly, with respect to standardized tests, the EEOC in one case found that use of a battery of tests, including the Wonderlic and Bennett tests used by the Company in the instant case, resulted in 58% of whites passing the tests, as compared with only 6% of the blacks.30
Yes. Before July 2, 1965, the company had confined Negro employees to the Labor Department at the Dan River Steam Station, where the highest paying positions earned less than the lowest paying jobs in the Coal Handling, Operations, Maintenance, and Laboratory and Test departments, which employed only white workers.31 The requirements operated to disqualify Negroes at a substantially higher rate than white applicants.32 Basic intelligence must have the means of articulation to manifest itself fairly in a testing process.33
Negroes have long received inferior education in segregated schools.34 The jobs in question formerly had been filled only by white employees as part of a longstanding practice of giving preference to whites.35 The tests were not intended to measure the ability to perform particular jobs.36 The required scores matched the national median for high school graduates.
Such requirements violate Title VII when they operate to disqualify Negroes at a substantially higher rate than white applicants and the jobs in question had formerly been filled only by white employees pursuant to a longstanding practice of racial preference.37
Whether the absence of a discriminatory purpose or invidious intent in adopting the high school diploma and general intelligence test requirements insulates those standards from challenge under Title VII?38
The Court of Appeals held that the Company had adopted the diploma and test requirements without any intention to discriminate against Negro employees.39 We do not suggest that either the District Court or the Court of Appeals erred in examining the employer's intent.40 Good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as built-in headwinds for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability.41 Congress directed the thrust of the Act to the consequences of employment practices, not simply the motivation.42 More than that, Congress has placed on the employer the burden of showing that any given requirement must have a manifest relationship to the employment in question.43
No. The District Court determined that the company had ended its prior policy of overt racial discrimination at the Dan River Steam Station.44 The Court of Appeals reviewed the case and concluded there was no showing of a racial purpose or invidious intent in the adoption of the high school diploma requirement or general intelligence test.45 These standards had been applied fairly to whites and Negroes alike.46 Good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as built-in headwinds for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability.
The company's lack of discriminatory intent is suggested by special efforts to help the undereducated employees through Company financing of two-thirds the cost of tuition for high school training.47 Congress directed the thrust of the Act to the consequences of employment practices, not simply the motivation.
The absence of a discriminatory purpose or invidious intent in adopting the high school diploma and general intelligence test requirements does not insulate those standards from challenge under Title VII.48