## Facts

- A certified class of female Foreign Service Officers and applicants sued the Secretary of State under Title VII, alleging systemic sex discrimination in Foreign Service personnel practices from 1976 to 1983.
- The Foreign Service used a rank-in-person, “up or out” system in which assignments, evaluations, and selected posts strongly affected career advancement.
- Plaintiffs challenged multiple practices, including initial “cone” (functional specialty) assignments, out-of-cone and “stretch” assignments, selection for Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) posts and other key positions, and honor awards.
- Plaintiffs relied primarily on statistical analyses that purported to show substantial disparities between men and women in assignments, evaluations, and selection outcomes, with low likelihood that disparities occurred by chance.
- After a bench trial, the district court entered judgment for the Secretary, finding no unlawful discrimination and discounting plaintiffs’ statistical evidence.
- Plaintiffs appealed, arguing the district court used incorrect legal standards and made unsupported factual findings to reject probative statistics.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court misapplied Title VII disparate-treatment and disparate-impact frameworks in evaluating challenges to assignments, evaluations, selections for key posts, and awards.
2. Whether the district court applied incorrect legal standards to statistical proof (including statistical significance and standard deviations) and improperly rejected statistically significant disparities.
3. Whether critical factual findings used to dismiss plaintiffs’ statistical case were clearly erroneous because they rested on conjecture rather than record evidence.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit reversed significant portions of the judgment for the Secretary and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the district court’s decision rested on errors of law in its Title VII analysis and its approach to statistical evidence.
- The court found several key factual findings clearly erroneous where the district court discounted statistically significant disparities based on unsupported explanations.
- The court directed that plaintiffs’ challenges to intermediate employment practices (such as evaluations and developmental assignments) be considered as independently actionable under Title VII, not only through their asserted effect on ultimate promotions.

## Legal Principles

- In Title VII systemic-discrimination cases, statistically significant disparities can support an inference of discrimination and must be weighed as probative evidence rather than dismissed by speculation.
- Disparities exceeding roughly two to three standard deviations may be “suspect,” and statistical significance at approximately the 0.05 level may support an inference requiring an employer response.
- A trial court may not reject probative statistical evidence by positing hypothetical, unsupported nondiscriminatory explanations; record-based rebuttal is required.
- Disparate-treatment and disparate-impact theories are analytically distinct; courts must apply the proper framework to each challenged practice.
- Intermediate employment practices affecting opportunity and advancement (e.g., evaluations, stretch assignments, key developmental postings) can constitute actionable “terms, conditions, or privileges” of employment under Title VII even without proof of demonstrated effects on final promotion decisions.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded because the district court applied incorrect Title VII standards and improperly discounted statistically significant evidence of sex disparities in Foreign Service assignments, evaluations, key selections, and awards, requiring a proper evidentiary and legal reassessment on remand.


Palmer v. Shultz, 815 F.2d 84 (D.C. Cir. 1987)