So what you’re saying, minty, is that corporations have been successfully sued by not hiring people to be CEOs or CFOs or the like on the basis of racial discrimination?
If that is true, I find that to be very surprising.
“adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
What exactly are the boundaries to this? OK, so it can prevent an employer from saying, “I hate x group. We’re not hiring any of those people.”
But what if there was an honest conflict? What if a business needed to hire more workers to fill busy nights and weekends, and it got applications from people who said their religion prevents them from working those hours? If they are declined employment, do they have a case?
Dewey, you misunderstand me. I disagreed with Bricker’s statement that he doesn’t “question their freedom to make and implement” the policy. I am saying that the policy itself is an act of racial discrimination, and that the NFL and/or the individual teams could be held liable in a lawsuit by a non-black coach if the policy prevented him from getting a job interview he othewise would have. To put it mor plainly still, I am arguing that this might be, and definitely should be, grounds for a claim of “reverse” discrimination.
Airman Doors, if a company refuses to hire, interview, or promote a person because of their race, they have violated federal civil rights law and may be forced to pay damages in a civil lawsuit by the person who was the victim of that racial discrimination. It is not enough to interview Candidate A instead of Candidate B. Rather, the reason they did not interview Candidate B must his race.
Elwood Case: No, they would not have a case.
Y’know, I hate to try to inject common sense into a legal argument, but IIRC, no black candidates would interview with the Lions because they assumed Mariucci was going to get the job. Isn’t that a mitigating circumstance?
Exactly, An Arky. According to the Detroit Free Press, the Lions attempted to interview 5 black candidates, all of whom turned them down. If the Lions hadn’t tried, the fine would be fair. However, how can they interview a minority if no one agrees to an interview???
Well that makes more sense. 
I don’t think a non-black coach would have a claim (though they probably should under a strict reading of the statute). Any number of companies have internal affirmative action programs that require minority candidates be considered for job openings, and there haven’t exactly been a rash of civil rights lawsuits against them.
Is there a limit on the number of applicants that a team can process? How would interviewing x black (or Maori or Tibetan) individuals interfere with a white applicant’s ability to get an interview?
I’m not defending the NFL rule, but I think it would be really difficult to make a case that Stasiu Dombrowski did not get an interview because too many blacks were being interviewed. If a team wants to look at the white guy, they just add him to the (infinitely expanding) list.
While there’s obviously no actual limit to the number of candidates a team can interview, there is certainly a practical limit. Teams don’t have the luxury of waiting months and months to fill a head coaching position. With the league demanding that they interview minority candidates or face a $200K fine, the time and resources that they can devote to finding other candidates are obviously diminished. It’s simply not an infinitely expandable list.
I agree that it would not be an easy claim to make in terms of causation, but the blatant racial discrimination of the NFL’s policy makes the rest of the case very easy to prove.
minty, I’d really love to see you take this “easy to prove” case. The team has only to interview a single black guy to meet the standards. How is any white guy going to prove that a single black guy bumped him off the list? Certainly “infinitely expanding” was hyperbole. However, the addition of one black applicant is simply not going to knock a guy off unless there were already some large number of white guys ahead of the offended party. How many guys does a team interview? Three? Interview four. Seven? Interview eight. The plaintiff would have to demonstrate that there was a finite number beyond which the addition of a single blackapplicant bumped him. What is that number? Were does the NFL specify the maximum number of interviews a team may hold?
(And if the team interviews three black guys, then they are obviously going beyond just filling the rule, so the claim that the plaintiff was left off to satisfy the rule is ridiculous.)
I love this board. By the time I get back to this thread to continue my argument, my questions/points are already ably raised by Dewey and tomndebb.
So…er… what they said.
Call me daft, but doesn’t this just seem like blatant profiteering on the part of the NFL? It’s an easy buck made under the guise of diversity. My question is, where is this fine going to go? Who is it going to help? Is the 200k going to help other minorities get OTHER jobs with the NFL? I’d say it’s unlikely, although I’m not certain.
The policy itself is a strawman. In effect, the NFL is saying to the clubs “you don’t have to HIRE a minority, but you do have to make it LOOK like you want to” bah! :dubious:
I know it’s a dead horse, but what about the most bloody qualified PERSON for the job? What about making that the only qualification, rather than fecking skin colour? It’s as much an insult as blatant discrimination, this affirmative action “here silly minority, we know you can’t help yourself, so we’ll do it all for you” again, bah! :mad: :mad:
I am loathe to admit that racism is dead, but it’s slowly dying, and it will do so until its’ lower threshold limit is reached. EQUAL opportunity is the message here, rather than SPECIAL opportunity. With any luck, future generations will understand that, and stories like this one will evaporate, just like the hate.
I did not claim it was an “easy to prove” case. In fact, I expressly stated that “it would not be an easy claim to make in terms of causation,” i.e., proving that the plaintiff was harmed by the discriminatory practice. I absolutely would be easy to prove that, as the federal statute says, the team and league “limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The policy expressly classifies applicants according to their race. That element of the claim could not be any plainer, Tom.
There was a case of a womans suing because her employer reuired her to work on Sunday. I’m not sure, but I think she lost.
HumanStromboli
Did you miss the “in principle” part?
I don’t see how this policy is supposed to help black people. To expand on Airman Door’s point, how would you feel if you knew that you were being interviewed solely to fulfill a diversity requirement? I don’t know about you, but I’d be rather pissed. Go to all that trouble to be interviewed by someone who didn’t want to hire you in the first place, and now how even more of a reason to resent you? I can see why the other five candidates turned down offers for interviews. They’re not idiots. They knew what was going on.
A white person offered an interview knows he’s being offered one for his talent. A black one is going to waste a bunch of his time going to “interviews” that are in fact “ask a bunch of questions and pretend to be interested” sessions, and may miss out on real offers because he’s too busy chasing nondomesticated fowl. Seems to me blacks would have a cause of action against the NFL, seeing as how they’ve in essense introduced an “it is mandatory to screw with black people’s minds” policy.
Yeah, but the other clause is
You would need to prove that the rule would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee. Without proving that an interview with one black deprived or tended to deprive a white guy of employment, the rest appears irrelevant to me.
TheRyan, the interviewee gets to ask questions, learns about how to present himself better, gets feedback, and figure what a team needs in a coach, all of which is a lot more information gathered than not being interviewed at all. Most of all, he can figure out the difference between real interest and ‘filling in a minority interview’ slot, and can talk about the process.
I believe you will find that I have made that exact same point in pretty much every post I’ve made in this thread. Casusation, remember?
Although note that the statute applies to applicants in addition to employees.
OK, going back to
You seem to be arguing that the mere mention of race makes it an issue of discrimination. Yet that is not the case. The inclusion of a single black person in the list of applicants (with no claim that that person must be hired) is simply not the same as excluding (“deprive or tend to deprive”) someone else. You have claimed that simply mentioning blacks makes it discrimination, but I do not see your argument. The inclusion of one individual of one group simply fails to “limit, segregate, or classify.”
You have asserted a “blatant racial discrimination of the NFL’s policy” and you have failed to demonstrate where that exists. Inclusion of group A is not exclusion of any other group, particularly when the inclusion is limited to a single interview of a single applicant from a group of applicants with no fixed number.
Not so. But the mere classification of applicants according to race–not just data collection, but $200K fines–is most certainly discrimination under the statute I quoted above.
Fail to interview white guys = no penalty
Fail to interview black guys = $200K fine
Maybe, maybe not. As I stated above, the practicalities of interviewing for head coaches means that only a small number of people can be interviewed before a hiring decision is made. If you are a marginal candidate, but you don’t get an interview because the team had to interview somebody of an appropriate race, you have been unlawfully discriminated against under federal employment discrimination law.
And for the love of god, pleasedon’t repeat your point that it’s a bitch to prove that you didn’t get an interview because somebody else got an interview. I am perfectly aware of that difficiulty, just as I am aware of the difficulty of proving discriminatory intent in most employment discrimination cases.
If you have time for five interviews, and one of them must be a racial minority, there is a damn good argument that non-racial minority #5 got screwed thanks to an illegal employment policy. Simple as that.
Failure to interview a black guy = $200K fine\
Failure to interview white guy = no fine
Looks like rather a serious race-based distinction to me.