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Personnel Selection: Law/Legal Issues: Court Cases

One of the first important court cases to address the interpretation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was Griggs v. Duke Power. The impetus for this case was the requirement, by Duke Power, that laborers transferring to other departments have a high school diploma. This selection requirement failed under scruitiny since there were non-minorities who performed satisfactorily and achieved promotions though they did not have diplomas. In this case, the court emphasized that a selection device should measure the person for the job, not the person in the abstract.

Commenting in this case on Title VII of the the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the court stated:

Nothing in the Act precludes the use of testing or measuring procedures; obviously they are useful. What Congress has forbidden is giving these devices and mechanisms controlling force unless they are demonstrably a reasonable measure of job performance...What Congress has commanded is that any tests used must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract

In Albermarle Paper Company v. Moody, the U.S. Supreme Court reinforced the concept of job relatedness. Though Albermarle had employed a psychologist to demonstrate correlations between test scores and job performance ratings, the Court noted that the correlations were only shown for three of eight job progressions for which the test was used and no job analysis was conducted. In supporting earlier court decisions, the Court emphasized the need for data on all jobs.


A test may be used in jobs other than those for which it has been professionally validated only if there are no significant differences between the studied and unstudied jobs.

In summary, the major influences by Courts on Personnel Selection are as follows:

While a job analysis alone does not provide insurance against litigation, it is a key element in designing human performance management and development systems that can stand up to legal challenges.