Projected Scope of Authority
The underlying rule in Washington v. Davis was seemingly affirmed 11 years later in McClesky v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987). McClesky applied the requirement that more than mere discriminatory effect be shown in order to invalidate criminal statutes which are challenged under the Equal Protection clause of the United States Constitution. Likewise, Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979), decided only 3 years after Washington, stated explicitly in its holding that legislation obnoxious to the Equal Protection clause is that which is passed "because of, not merely in spite of, its adverse effects upon an identifiable group."
The Equal Protection clause applies here because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 exempts agencies of the District of Columbia (as well as the Federal Government and Indian tribes). Employment practices by other employers which have a disparate impact on racial groups may be unlawful under Title VII even when the employer is acting without discriminatory motive (Griggs v. Duke Power Co.), although Justice Scalia indicated in Ricci v. DeStefano that he and other Justices may be ready to hold the disparate impact provisions of Title VII unconstitutional.
Read more about this topic: Washington V. Davis
Famous quotes containing the words projected, scope and/or authority:
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Happy is that mother whose ability to help her children continues on from babyhood and manhood into maturity. Blessed is the son who need not leave his mother at the threshold of the world’s activities, but may always and everywhere have her blessing and her help. Thrice blessed are the son and the mother between whom there exists an association not only physical and affectional, but spiritual and intellectual, and broad and wise as is the scope of each being.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.”
—Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)