## Facts

- Duke Power Company previously maintained overt racial segregation at its Dan River Steam Station, limiting Black employees to the Labor Department, which paid less than the “inside” departments staffed by white employees.
- The plant had five departments; advancement generally occurred within departments based on job seniority, and transfers typically required starting at the bottom of the new department.
- In 1955, Duke imposed a high-school diploma requirement for assignment to departments other than Labor and for certain transfers into inside departments.
- After Title VII became effective and Duke ended its formal racial restriction in 1965, Duke extended the diploma requirement to transfers from the Labor Department.
- Duke also allowed employees to qualify for transfers by passing one of two standardized tests intended to measure general intelligence or mechanical ability, not specific job skills.
- White employees hired before the diploma policy who lacked diplomas continued working and advancing in higher-paying departments, while Black employees without diplomas or passing test scores were blocked from transfer and promotion.
- Black employees filed a Title VII class action challenging the diploma and testing requirements as disproportionately excluding Black workers and lacking a demonstrated connection to job performance.

## Issues

1. Whether facially neutral high-school diploma and standardized testing requirements violate Title VII absent proof of discriminatory purpose.
2. Whether Title VII prohibits employment practices with disproportionate racial effects even without discriminatory intent.
3. What weight, if any, courts must give to EEOC guidelines stating that employment tests should be job-related.

## Decision

- The Fourth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the Title VII claims.
- The court held the plaintiffs failed to show the diploma and testing requirements were adopted or administered with a discriminatory purpose.
- The court treated uniform application of the criteria to Black and white employees as significant evidence of nondiscrimination.
- The court declined to treat EEOC guidelines on test job-relatedness as controlling because the EEOC lacked adjudicatory or rulemaking power.
- Disproportionate racial impact, standing alone, was held insufficient to establish a Title VII violation under the court’s interpretation.

## Legal Principles

- Under this decision, Title VII liability turned primarily on proof of intentional discrimination; facial neutrality and equal application weighed against finding a violation.
- Title VII was read not to require employers to validate neutral selection criteria as job-related solely because the criteria disproportionately excluded a protected group.
- EEOC interpretive guidelines were considered nonbinding and could be rejected where the court found they exceeded what Congress wrote into Title VII.
- Past segregation was treated as unlawful but not, by itself, dispositive of the legality of later-adopted neutral requirements.

## Conclusion

The Fourth Circuit held that Duke’s diploma and testing requirements did not violate Title VII because the plaintiffs did not prove discriminatory purpose and because the statute, as interpreted by the court, did not prohibit neutral employment standards based solely on disparate racial effects.


Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 420 F.2d 1225 (4th Cir. 1970)