Discriminatory Job Knowledge Tests, Police Promotions, and What Title VII Can Learn from Tort Law

M. Brodin
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Selection devices in use by police departments around the nation have stifled advancement for a disproportionate number of otherwise qualified minority candidates, and hindered the desired diversification of the upper ranks. Favoring the skill of memorization of police manuals, these exams have little to do with predicting success as a sergeant or other police supervisor. Yet inertia as well as other forces have kept them in place for decades. The traditional Title VII approach, a disparate impact challenge, has proven unsatisfactory given the relative ease with which the exams can be "content validated" in court. This article proposes a new approach familiar to tort lawyers - the inference of intent from actions taken with foreseeable or inevitable consequences. When a police agency routinely administers multiple-choice exams, fully aware of the exclusionary impact on minorities, that result can no longer be deemed "unintentional," and the matter should thus be treated as disparate treatment, with all the advantageous liability and remedial consequences that would follow. The U.S. Department of Justice has harshly criticized police departments in Ferguson, Chicago, Baltimore, and elsewhere following incidents of police killings of unarmed civilians. Each report points to poor supervision of line officers, and lack of diversity in supervisory positions, as major contributing factors. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, landmark legislation designed to open employment opportunities to minorities and women, is uniquely positioned to address the problem. But to do so, courts must disentangle these litigations from the hyper-technical world of test validation, and instead apply a commonsense definition of intentional discrimination applied in tort litigation.
歧视性职业知识测试,警察晋升,以及第七章可以从侵权法中学到什么
全国各地警察部门使用的选拔手段阻碍了不成比例的合格少数族裔候选人的晋升,并阻碍了期望的高层多元化。这些考试倾向于记忆警察手册的技能,与预测成为警长或其他警察主管的成功没有什么关系。然而,惯性和其他力量使它们保持了几十年。鉴于考试在法庭上相对容易得到“内容验证”,传统的《教育法第七章》(Title VII)方法——一种不同影响的挑战——已被证明不能令人满意。本文提出了一种侵权律师熟悉的新方法——从具有可预见或不可避免后果的行为中推断意图。当一个警察机构在充分意识到对少数民族的排斥影响的情况下,例行地进行多项选择考试时,这种结果就不能再被视为“无意的”,因此,这件事应该被视为差别待遇,随之而来的是所有有利的责任和补救后果。在发生警察枪杀手无寸铁的平民事件后,美国司法部严厉批评了弗格森、芝加哥、巴尔的摩等地的警察部门。每一份报告都指出,对一线官员的监管不力,以及监管职位缺乏多样性,是造成这种情况的主要因素。1964年《民权法案》第七章是一部里程碑式的立法,旨在为少数民族和妇女提供就业机会,它在解决这一问题上具有独特的地位。但要做到这一点,法院必须将这些诉讼从测试验证的超技术世界中解脱出来,而是应用侵权诉讼中适用的故意歧视的常识性定义。
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