Group 1 - Chapter 6. Question 11. (Post for Mamoun Abdel Karim)

In our opinion, the courts’ incorrectly initially but by reversing the decision justified affirmative action. To my knowledge, affirmative action is only appropriate if they are based on past findings of discrimination. In this case, as the prompt in the book states, “the affirmative action plan was adopted voluntarily by the city in response to the marked disparity between the percentage of African Americans employees in the police and fire departments with the percentage of African Americans in the population.” That is an incorrect basis to apply affirmative action, and hence the plaintiff’s argument stands valid because affirmative actions was implemented on incorrect grounds.

COURTS’ DECISION
The district court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on December 29, 1983, and subsequently denied plaintiff's motion to set aside the order granting summary judgment on January 27, 1984. The district court determined that, although the statute of limitations barred plaintiff's EEOC charge because he failed to file it within 180 days of the Board's decision to hire the firefighters, the statute was equitably tolled by Potvin's assurances that plaintiff would be hired. Reaching the merits of defendants' arguments, the district court held that summary judgment should be granted because neither Title VII nor the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the adoption of an affirmative action program designed to remedy the statistical disparity between the percentage of minorities in the population of the City and the percentage of minorities in the Fire Department.
After the decision was appealed, the district court decide that evidence of a statistical disparity between the percentage of minorities employed in the Department and the percentage of minorities within the population of South Bend constituted, without more, a finding of past discrimination. Accordingly, the district court's grant of summary judgment is REVERSED, and this case is REMANDED to the district judge from which this appeal was taken for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Mamoun Abdel Karim