The Court Strikes a Blow for Seniority

After passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, federal courts responded sympathetically to lawsuits seeking an end to job discrimination in U.S. industry. The result has been measurable progress in the hiring and promotion of blacks, other minorities and women. Last week the Supreme Court took a step that seemed to brake the thrust of the past dozen-odd years. In a 7-to-2 decision, the court struck a blow for union seniority systems and weakened the basis for so-called past-discrimination suits. Through such suits minority-group workers have won retroactive seniority over whites and, in some cases, millions of dollars in back pay.

Specifically, the court ruled that a seniority system was not necessarily illegal even if its effect was to favor white males over others in bidding for promotions, protection from layoffs and similar benefits of years on the job. Justice Potter Stewart, expressing the majority's opinion, wrote that "bona fide" seniority systems with no overt racial underpinnings are not unlawful, even though such systems may in practice have the impact of discriminating against certain workers. As for discrimination that occurred prior to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the court ruled that "no person may be given retroactive seniority to a date earlier than the effective date of the act." In passing the legislation, Stewart said, it was not the intent of Congress to "destroy or water down the vested seniority rights of employees simply because their employer had engaged in discrimination prior to the passage of the act."

Seniority lists that deliberately discriminate are still illegal, whether they were started before or after the 1964 act. But that concession gave little comfort to lawyers who have waged crusades against job bias. Proving that a seniority system was set up with the intent to discriminate is extraordinarily difficult. The result: last week's decision almost eliminates long-established seniority systems as whipping boys for job-bias activists.

Said N.A.A.C.P. Washington Bureau Director Clarence Mitchell: "It seems to me that the court did not do its homework--or at least that seven Justices did not--because the decision distorts the clear intent of Congress. Congress did not intend to preserve a discriminatory seniority system." The two dissenting Justices, Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan, called the decision "devastating." They said it worked against the spirit of the court's own ruling last year that retroactive seniority must be granted to workers who can prove job bias (TIME, April 5,1976).

Dual System. Last week's decision ended a long and hard-fought case against the Teamsters and T.I.M.E.-DC, Inc., a trucking company based in Lubbock, Texas, which the Government accused of discriminating against blacks and Hispanics in deciding who would get over-the-road driving jobs. As recently as 1971, only 13 of the company's 1,828 over-the-road drivers were members of minorities. Like almost all trucking companies, T.I.M.E.-DC had two seniority systems, one for over-the-road drivers, the other for workers in more menial jobs. If a warehouse cargo loader became a driver, he had to begin building seniority all over again at his truck terminal. The Government claimed that was unjust, especially for blacks, who would have begun building seniority as drivers had they not been confined to menial jobs in the first place. In its decision, the court majority found that the dual system, for all its faults, did not "have its genesis in racial discrimination," nor did it penalize blacks or other minorities more than it did whites who started on the loading dock.

What impact will the decision have? In theory, it could lead to the reopening of big job-discrimination cases already settled by consent decree, such as those involving AT&T and big U.S. steelmakers. All have moved decisively to upgrade blacks and other minorities. But no organized group is likely to challenge those programs, and companies and unions will probably keep them intact, for public relations reasons if no others.

The Supreme Court ruling, however, is likely to discourage civil rights activists from filing, or prevent them from winning, new antibias cases asking for retroactive seniority for large groups of workers going back to the date of original hire. It also casts a shadow over new seniority systems, benefiting minorities, that have been negotiated between companies and unions; when those contracts come up for renegotiation, white unionists may argue that there is no court compulsion to keep the new systems. Some lawyers predict that another effect of the ruling will be to prompt a flood of "reverse discrimination" suits by white males claiming that they were held back so that women and blacks could catch up. The leading reverse-discrimination case, filed by a white student who was denied admission to the University of California at Davis Medical School, is headed for argument before the Supreme Court next fall or winter.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.