A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court's decision that a pre-employment "strength test" discriminated against female applicants for jobs at the Dial Corporation's Armour Star sausage-making plant in Fort Madison, Iowa.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit--which covers Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota--upheld the findings of U.S. District Judge Ronald E. Longstaff that the test had a disparate impact against women. The decision also upheld a jury's finding that after the second year, continued use of the test amounted to intentional discrimination against women.

The company's seven-minute test, called the Work Tolerance Screen (WTS), required the applicant to carry 35-pound weights back and forth, lifting them to heights of 35 and 65 inches. More than 95 percent of male applicants passed the test, but fewer than 40 percent of female applicants passed it. In the three years before the test was introduced, 46 percent of the new hires were women, but the number of women hires dropped to fifteen percent after the test was implemented.

During a trial, an expert testifying for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said the test was significantly more difficult than the actual job workers performed at the plant. He said that while workers peformed 1.25 lifts per minute on average and rested between lifts, applicants who took the test performed 6 lifts per minute on average, usually without any breaks.

An expert testifying for the company disagreed, saying the test effectively measured skills that were representative of the actual job. The company also argued that the test was a business necessity because it drastically decreased the number of injuries in the sausage production area of the plant.

However, the appeals court upheld a district court's ruling that the company failed to prove that the test was a business necessity and that its other safety measures "could not produce the same results."

"Although Dial claims that the decrease in injuries shows that the WTS enabled it to predict which applicants could safely handle the strenuous nature of the work, the sausage plant injuries started decreasing before the WTS was implemented," the appeals court wrote. "Moreover, the injury rate for women employees was lower than that for men in two of the three years before Dial implemented the WTS."

Paula Liles, of Fort Madison, Iowa, filed the original discrimination charge on which the EEOC's lawsuit was based. Liles and a number of the other class members were hired by Dial following the district court ruling and are currently employed by Dial's successor at the plant, Pinnacle Corporation.

The Eighth Circuit decision also affirmed the district court's award of back pay and the cost of healthcare premiums for 52 of the 53 class members. It reversed the lower court's denial of back pay to one of the class members, and remanded her case for additional proceedings.

Link

• Text of Ruling (PDF)