Supreme Court Issues Ruling in Lewis v. City of Chicago

On May 24, 2010, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in Lewis v. City of Chicago, No. 08-974, holding that a disparate impact employment discrimination charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") within 300 days of a discriminatory practice's application, rather than its adoption, will be deemed timely. The Court's unanimous opinion, authored by Justice Scalia, reversed and remanded the Seventh Circuit's holding that a plaintiff must file a charge within 300 days of when the alleged discriminatory practice is adopted.

The case centered around a test that the City of Chicago ("City") gave to firefighter candidates in 1995. Lewis v. City of Chicago, 2005 WL 693618, at *1 (N.D. Ill. March 22, 2005). The City administered the written test to 26,000 candidates as the first step in its hiring procedures. The test results were finalized and communicated to candidates in January 1996. Based on the results of the test, the City classified applicants into three groups: "well qualified," "qualified," and "not qualified." Id. at *1-2. In May 1996, the City began hiring based on the test results and, until 2001, only allowed the hiring of applicants from the "well qualified" group. This practice had a disparate impact on African-American applicants as 12.6 percent of whites as compared to 2.2 percent of African-Americans scored as "well qualified." Id. at *2.

In 1998, the African-American Fire Fighters League and a class of African-Americans who applied for entry-level firefighter positions and scored in the "qualified" category on the test sued the City alleging that the City's decision to hire only from the "well-qualified" group had an adverse impact on African-Americans. Id. at *1. The plaintiffs had filed charges with the EEOC in March 1997, more than 400 days after the announcement of the test results but within 300 days of when the City began to hire applicants. The district court, which had previously denied the City's motion for summary judgment on timeliness grounds, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on the grounds that the City had not proved that its decision to hire only from the group of applicants who were "well qualified" was consistent with a business necessity, and even if it had, there were less discriminatory means available. Id. at *14.

The City appealed the district court's decision to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The Seventh Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Posner, reversed...