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PaperclipPerfector  21d ago (text post)   32017 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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I doubt it will make much difference. The part about Griggs that everyone forgets is that the reason they weren't allowed to use the test was because they couldn't show that it actually resulted in better hires. The government already uses aptitude testing much more than the private sector, not to mention domain specific testing. I had to take an aptitude testing for hitting when I got my job with the state, and I've never had to take one in the private sector, excepting an $8/hour inventory job I had in college.

an aptitude testing for hitting

I hope you knocked it out of the park.

yeah AFQT is basically a modified IQ test

Griggs is a case where the defendant company was just using the tests to cover up intentional discrimination, which is one of many reasons that it is bad law. The trope of bad cases = bad law is common, and that is one. The more important part is that it substantively was written into the CRA in the early 90s as well, which makes overturning a sub-holding from a really dumb case only one obstacle.

I do agree that its not common in private practice, and wouldn't quickly become so to administer tests to applicants. That is too expensive. Instead, industries and unions would step in and have industry wide tests and/or union entrance exams. This diffuses the costs significantly so you aren't administering 100 tests to fill 3 positions. Instead, an aspiring machinist takes the Wunderlich, or something similar and then every possible employer in the country can see his machinist potential.

I always wanted to point that out about Griggs but Duke was so adamant about how that totally wasn't what they were doing that the court just accepted it at face value, so it's codified in the opinion. The problem isn't so much that it's a bad case as it is that if it went the other way plenty of companies in the South would have come up with bullshit tests to justify continued discrimination.

The opinion, when read in full, makes it clear that the SCOTUS composition at the time was not believing this tale.

There was also lots of evidence that there was intentional racial discrimination baked into the results.

There was no reason SCOTUS had to make a ruling about disparate impact when one objectively evaluates the case. They wanted to make that ruling. Which makes sense, because that court was one of the the most overreaching courts in US history, and they also happened to be extremely left wing.

Griggs is a case where the defendant company was just using the tests to cover up intentional discrimination, which is one of many reasons that it is bad law.

The Supreme Court explicitly said they were not doing that.

They said that the company said they weren't . They clearly did not believe them. Said court was that eras equivalent of Sonia Sotomayor, but 6 of them.

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