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Friday, April 18, 2014

Sixth Circuit Goes Hard on EEOC Background Check Litigation

Remember when a district court rejected the EEOC's use of "race raters" in a disparate impact claim against Kaplan? And discovery revealed that the EEOC itself used the same background checks that it based its lawsuit on? Here's a refresher.

For some reason, the EEOC decided to appeal to the Sixth Circuit - you can now read the Sixth Circuit's opinion here. Let's just say it did not go well. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but I think you can get the flavor from my masterful selection of excerpts along with my commentary:
In this case the EEOC sued the defendants for using the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses. 
[That's the first sentence!? Oh well, it can only get better for the EEOC from here, right?] . . . . 
The EEOC’s case goes downhill from there. 
[How is that possible?] . . . . 
We need not belabor the issue further. The EEOC brought this case on the basis of a homemade methodology, crafted by a witness with no particular expertise to craft it, administered by persons with no particular expertise to administer it, tested by no one, and accepted only by the witness himself. 
[oh.] 
The district court’s judgment is affirmed. 
[Ya don't say.]
The EEOC has targeted criminal and credit background checks as having a disparate impact on racial minorities. It didn't go very well in this case.

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