Sweet Air Filtration Products Company, a major supplier of air filters sold throughout the United States, employs one hundred workers at its principal manufacturing plant. The plant is located in Thunder Bay, which has a population that is 50 percent

Question

white and 25 percent African American, with the balance Hispanic American, Asian American, and others. Sweet Air requires a high school diploma as a condition of employment for its cleaning crew. Three-fourths of the white population completed high school, compared with only one-fourth of those in the minority groups. Sweet Air has an all-white cleaning crew. Has Sweet Air violated the Civil Rights Act? Explain.

Answer 1

Most likely, yes, Sweet Air has violated the Civil Rights Act.
Sweet Air as an employer falls under the Civil Rights Act. Under that act, an employer can legally impose an educational requirement if the requirement is directly related to, and necessary for, performance of the job. In this situation, the employer is requiring a high school diploma as a condition of employment for its cleaning crew. A high school diploma is not related to, or necessary for, the competent performance of a job on a cleaning crew.

Therefore, if someone were to challenge Sweet Air's practices, a court would be likely to consider the disparate impact that the educational requirement had on Sweet Air's hiring of minorities. Sweet Air's educational requirement resulted in its hiring an all-white cleaning crew in an area in which 75 percent of the pool of qualified applicants were minorities. Therefore, Sweet Air's educational requirement would likely be considered unintentional (disparate-impact) discrimination against minorities.