e Court ruled that Price Waterhouse had based its decision on unlawful sex stereotyping. The decision shifted the legal burden of proof to the employer, which should make it easier for employees to win future Title VII cases. Experts say that the decision's main effect may be to force companies to eliminate bias in the people making important personnel decisions for them. The decision was a landmark for anti-discrimination, but we should not overemphasize its power. Even now, after a long and expensive court battle, only 28 of Price Waterhouse's 900 partners are women.
One avenue of reform which the U.S. Supreme Court has long supported is the use of affirmative action plans. On March 25, 1987 the court ruled that the public transportation agency of Santa Clara County, California was justified in giving a road dispatcher's job to Diane Joyce rather than a man. Joyce scored two points lower on a test than the man did, but a panel of supervisors found her to be otherwise just as qualified.
The decision was based on the fact that the agency's affirmative action plan met the Court's three criteria for fairness. The plan was flexible, temporary, and designed to gradually correct the imbalance in the overwhelmingly white male work force. The Reagan administration had taken the position that affirmative action plans were only permissible if they addressed individual victims of actual discrimination. The Supreme Court clearly disagreed, but it was careful to point out that employers didn't have to have an affirmative action plan, nor were they precluded from hiring the most qualified candidate for a given
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