Apartheid. USA 1988

[p. 37]

February 25, 1987:

A sharply divided Supreme Court, rejecting the Reagan Administration position, ruled that judges may order employers to use strict racial quotas temporarily in promotions as well as hiring to counter severe past discrimination against blacks. By 5 to 4, the Court upheld a Federal District judge's orders in 1983 and 1984 requiring Alabama to promote one black state trooper for each white trooper, assuming qualified blacks were available, until the state could develop a promotion procedure acceptable to the judge. The decision reinforced and partly expanded three major rulings last year in which the Court rejected the Administration's broad attack on all use of racial preferences to remedy past job discrimination and approved use of temporary, limited hiring preferences. In its affirmative action decision, the Court made clear for the first time that courts, at least in extreme cases, may order racial preferences in promotions as well as in hiring and may use highly specific numerical ‘catch-up’ quotas to bring an employer's work force quickly into line with the percentage of qualified members of minority groups in the available labor pool. The [Court's] majority also said a court order requiring that black employees be promoted ahead of whites with higher test scores, like a hiring preference, did not have so severe an impact on the whites as would a requirement that whites be laid off before less senior blacks.^56.

56. The New York Times, from a report by Stuart Taylor Jr (frontpage headline)