“Donald Duke” and Employment Discrimination

It’s not hard to think of important race discrimination cases that could be reversed by President Trump’s EEOC. Under President Reagan, this agency filed a lawsuit against a small manufacturer on the southwest side of Chicago. From 1979 until 1985, O & G hired 87 people—but not one African–American. The reason the agency pulled that case from a large stack of others is that no evidence—other than statistics—indicated intent to discriminate. An all-white workforce referred white applicants before the jobs were even advertised. The EEOC retained an urban planning expert, Dr. Pierre DeVise, who concluded that that African–American availability in the relevant labor market ranged from 22.5% to 31%. The trial court—finding for the EEOC— said that “the statistical probability using standard deviation analysis of no black hires during the period 1979 through 1985 was infinitesimal.” In other words, intentional discrimination was legally inferable from the statistics—a key ruling that has been used in many other cases to unmask stealthy discrimination. The court ordered damages of $378,000. That's the kind of case— one brought by the professional staff appointed by an iconic conservative President— that Donald Duke’s EEOC would take down.