Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio

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Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 18, 1989
Decided June 5, 1989
Full case name: Wards Cove Packing Company, Incorporated, et al. v. Atonio, et al.
Citations: 490 U.S. 642; 109 S. Ct. 2115; 104 L. Ed. 2d 733; 1989 U.S. LEXIS 2794; 57 U.S.L.W. 4583; 49 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1519; 50 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) P39,021
Prior history: Reversed and remanded, 827 F.2d 439. Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit, granted
Subsequent history: 827 F.2d 439, reversed and remanded.
Holding
To determine whether a disparate-impact case exists, compare racial composition of the at-issue jobs and the racial composition of the qualified population in the relevant labor market.
Court membership
Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy
Case opinions
Majority by: White
Joined by: Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy
Dissent by: Blackmun
Joined by: Brennan, Marshall
Dissent by: Stevens
Joined by: Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun
Laws applied
Hazelwood School Dist. v. United States

Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642 (1989), was a court case argued before the United States Supreme Court on January 18, 1989. It concerned employment discrimination and was decided on June 5, 1989.

A group of nonwhite cannery workers filed suit in District Court siting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 complaining that Wards Cove Packing Co. owner of Alaskan salmon canneries, was using discriminatory hiring practices that resulted in a large number of the skilled noncannery jobs to be filled by white workers and a large number of the unskilled cannery jobs to be filled by nonwhites. The District Court case was found in favor of the defendants, Wards Cove Packing Co.

The Plaintiffs appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which reversed the District Court decision stating the the Petitioners, the Plaintiffs in the District Court, had made a prima facie case of disparate impact. The decision was based on statistics provided by the Petitioners that showed a high percentage of nonwhite workers in the cannery jobs and a low percentage of the noncannery jobs filled by nonwhite workers.

Wards Cove Packing Co. then appealed the Court of Appeals ruling to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court determined that the Court of Appeals had erred by using inappropriate statistics and comparison. The majority determined that the proper comparison was to compare the percentage of nonwhite workers in noncannery jobs with the percentage of the available labor pool that were nonwhite and who had the appropriate skills to perform the noncannery jobs.

The Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Court of Appeals with instructions to use the more appropriate comparison. Further if on remand the Respondents did establish a prima facie disparate-impact case the Petitioners would then need to "produce evidence of a legitmate business justification" for the hiring practices that created the disparity.


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Affirmative action in the United States
Supreme Court decisions Brown v. Board of Education (1954) • Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) • Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) • Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)
Federal legislation and edicts Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) • Executive Order 10925 (1961) • Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Executive Order 11246 (1965)
State initiatives Proposition 209 (CA, 1996) • Initiative 200 (WA, 1998) • Proposal 2 (MI, 2006)
People Ward Connerly • Arthur Fletcher
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