Ba 370 - Employment Law

Case Questions Week 4

Dawn Smith

Grantham University

BA370 Employment Law

Heather Douglas

December 29, 2015

Case Questions Week 4

Johnson versus Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County (Chapter 8, page 269)

        In the case of Johnson versus Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County; a male employee of the transportation agency was passed over for the promotional position of road dispatcher in favor of a less qualified female employee who also applied for the promotion.  The question the court was asked to rule on was, did the company take into account the sex of the applicants in violation of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when making their decision to hire the female applicant over the male.  The Court upheld the employer’s decision allowing gender to be judged as a decisive factor when picking qualified candidates for positions where women are underutilized (Walsh, page 269).  

        This case exposes legal conditions of affirmative action plans are far from perfect and there is going to be a margin of error.  In addition, as long as the plan is amenable and organizations are making an effort to have nondiscriminatory procedures, then they will be able to discriminate, even if not accidental.  In this case Johnson was clearly the more qualified candidate, had higher scores and better interviews, who was passed over for a promotional opportunity based on gender (Walsh, page 269).  

        The county presented evidence in this case of an employer wishing to validate their affirmative action plan need only indicate the obvious inequality in customarily segregated jobs.  The employment significance of the gender of an applicant for a proficient craft job was substantiated by the reality of a "manifest imbalance" that revealed underrepresentation of women in "traditionally segregated job categories."  The Transportation Agency did not unreasonably hinder male employees' from advancement opportunities.  The action plan in no way was designed as a means of meeting so called quotas nor was it setting aside positions strictly for women.  The company was free to choose from several qualified applicants and the plaintiff kept his senior position with his current rate of pay (Walsh, page 270).  

        The court finds that the methods used to utilize the affirmative action plan did not unfairly burden white males as there was no evidence of blind hiring.  The employers had a pool of seven qualified candidates to choose from, one of which happened to be female.  The supervisors were given the directive to hire from that pool of qualified applicants, there were no specific positions set aside for the affirmative action plan and the gender of the person promoted was only one of the determining factors (Walsh page 270-271).