DOJ says EEOC pushed racial discrimination in hiring rules

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday told the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that its policies may have led to racial discrimination. The message came in an opinion document the DOJ published on Tuesday. The policies in question dealt with disparate impact liability, or the concept that an employer can be held liable if an action or code affects a group of its employees disproportionately. The U.S. Supreme Court first articulated the idea of disparate impact liability in 1971. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the Court held that employers can be held liable for discrimination if they use hiring policies that aren’t strictly necessary and that result in them hiring too few minorities.

What does this have to do with the EEOC? Currently, the commission’s policies have an unconstitutional view of disparate impact liability, the DOJ said. The EEOC’s rules have motivated employers to hire more minorities based solely on their race so that they don’t appear to be discriminating against those minorities, the department said. Essentially, the EEOC has required employers to meet certain racial quotas in their hiring practices. That violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, the DOJ said.

EEOC Chairwoman Andrea Lucas wrote on social media that the commission was grateful for the analysis. The opinion should clear up the Constitutional limits of disparate impact in cases of employment discrimination, she wrote.

Dig deeper: Read my report in the WORLD archives about President Donald Trump’s attempts last year to chip away at disparate impact liability.