Affirmative Action--Johnson v. Transportation Agency

In March of 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which established the President's Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity (Sander, 2001). The order stated that contractors doing business with the government would take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated fairly during their employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. The order´s main goal was directed at eliminating discrimination and ensuring equal rights for all citizens. Before the act was mandated there was no penalty for employers who practiced unfair hiring practices.

The federal government created a special government agency that would ensure that educational facilities and business were enforcing affirmative action. The branch was part of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The main function of the EEOC was to act as a facilitator between plaintiffs and private employers and to pressure violating employers to provide compensation, whether in the form of back pay or restitution. The EEOC also provides legal representation for victims of discriminatory acts.

There have been numerous court cases that have challenged the affirmative action mandate. In 1978, the Transportation Agency of Santa Clara County, California, created an affirmative action plan to bring about fair representation in its work force of women, minorities, and disabled persons. The transportation company did not specifically set a certain number of jobs for minorities, women, or the disabled, but instead set annual goals as guidelines for decisions about hiring and promoting workers.

The Santa Clara County Transportation Agency had a vacancy for a full time dispatcher. The job qualifications were very demanding, and only skilled workers could perform the duties. The position required at minimum four years of dispatch or road maintenance work experience for Santa Clara County. The EEOC job classification design designates a road dispatcher as a Skilled Craft Worker.

Out of two hundred positions, a woman did not hold one highly skilled position at the company. Paul Johnson and Diana Joyce were the leading candidates for the position. Paul Johnson and Diana Joyce were both well qualified for the position; however Paul Johnson received a better interview score than Joyce. The panel selected Joyce for the position instead of Johnson. Johnson decided to file a complaint against the transportation company because he felt that he was denied the job only because of his sex.

The case was very important because it was the first court case to challenge the legitimacy of sex-based affirmative action plans under Title VII. Two major questions that had to be answered from the case were directed towards affirmative action. First, did the Santa Clara affirmative action plan violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Secondly, did Santa Clara's affirmative action plan deprive Johnson of his 14th Amendment?

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Santa Clara Transportation Agency's affirmative action plan. The members of the Supreme Court realized that employers could hire women, minorities, and people with disabilities under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to remedy imbalances of female and male workers in a skilled job category. Furthermore, The Santa Clara Transportation Department had a wide range of qualifications that each applicant had to pass to be considered for the position; gender was not the only qualification. Lastly, the plan was acceptable because it was only a momentary means to overcome past discrimination against workers based on sex (Jackson, 2002).

Since the Reagan and Bush administration, the opponents of affirmative action have increased. Many politicians in the United States have criticized affirmative action. Many feel that affirmative action goes against everything that the Fourteenth Amendment stands for; however, civil rights groups and the NAACP organizations, among others, have defended affirmative action for years.

Some of the greatest opponents of the affirmative action rulings have been college students who were denied admission into college under affirmative action. Furthermore, many college professors have opposed the affirmative action mandate, because they feel that less qualified minority students are being accepted into rigorous programs only because of their color, sex, or disability (Sanders 2001).

A major case presented before the Supreme Court stemmed from an incident that occurred at the University of Michigan Law School. Barbara Grutter applied for admission to law school in the 1997-1998 academic year. After being rejected several times, she filed a lawsuit against the university, claiming that she was denied acceptance based on the color of her skin. After several years the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling of the college by a narrow 5-4 margin.

Last May, the directors of the American Council on Education indicated that the nation´s colleges and universities have made great strides in the last two decades. Colleges are promoting various forms of affirmative action programs to enhance diversity on campuses. Various forms of affirmative action, from outreach and admissions policies to employment incentives and specific training programs, have played an important role in the relative success that has been achieved to date and should not now be abandoned (Bourgeois, 2003).