A city employer which threw out the results of an objective promotional exam because there was a statistical racial disparity in favor of white and Hispanic firefighters violated the intentional discrimination provisions of Title VII, the U.S. Supreme Court rules.

The City of New Haven had argued that had they certified the test results, they could have faced Title VII liability for adopting a practice having a disparate impact on minority firefighters. However, the white and Hispanic firefighters alleged that discarding the test results intentionally discriminated against them based on their race. The Supreme Court now adopts a “strong-basis-in evidence standard” in order to resolve conflicts between Title VII’s disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions.

“Under Title VII, before an employer can engage in intentional discrimination for the asserted purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional, disparate impact, the employer must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action,” the Court holds.

“The racial adverse impact in this litigation was significant, and petitioners do not dispute that the City was faced with a prima facie case of disparate-impact liability,” the Court says. However, such a prima facie case—which was just “a threshold showing of a significant statistical disparity, and nothing more—is far from a strong basis in evidence that the City would have been liable under Title VII had it certified the test results,” the Court continues, deciding that the City could be liable for disparate impact discrimination “only if the exams at issue were not job related and consistent with business necessity, or if there existed an equally valid, less discriminatory alternative that served the City’s needs but that the City refused to adopt.” Ricci v. DeStefano