Public Interest Briefs

Center Scores Decisive Victory in Sex Discrimination Suit Against the Los Angeles Police Department

Receives Favorable Court of Appeals Ruling

In May, the Center won an important court decision in its lawsuit (Blake v. City of Los Angeles) charging the Los Angeles Police Department with sex discrimination in the hiring and promoting of women police officers. The victory came when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Center had proven that the police department had violated the U.S. Constitution and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in its pre-1973 hiring practices. The appellate court also indicated that LAPD’s post-1973 hiring practices were in apparent violation of federal law and sent this part of the case back to the lower court for a full trial.

For the last six years, Center attorneys have argued that the L.A. Police Department’s failure to hire women as police officers violates both the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and Titlve VII of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits sex discrimination in employment. Between 1969 and mid-1973, when the police department still classified jobs for “policemen” and “policewomen” separately, the department hired 3200 men and not one woman. Since July, 1973, when these separate job classifications were ended under the highly touted “unisex” program, virtually no women had been hired as police officers. In fact, because of the resignation or retirement of many women, the number and percentage of women on the force have actually declined under “unisex.” During this same time, study after study confirms that women can and do perform effectively as police officers, and many federal courts have struck down similar exclusionary employment practices in other urban police departments.

When the LAPD unveiled the so-called “unisex” position of “police officer” in 1973, it erected new restrictions and job requirements which had not existed previously. These included raising the minimum height requirement from 5’4” to 5' 6” which eliminates 86% of all women from even applying. The same 5’6” requirement excludes only 20% of the men. A new pre-employment physical agility test was also devised which eliminates approximately 50% of all female applicants but only 1% of the male applicants. Notably, since 1986, the only physical agility test administered to candidates for sworn positions was given to “policewoman” applicants in 1969. None of those applicants were hired. Yet, between 1986 and 1973, LAPD hired 4,891 “policeman” applicants without any physical agility requirement.

The Center is seeking to prove that these new requirements are not related to or predictive of job performance and that the validation studies done by the LAPD to try to prove that the tests are job related are, themselves, legally inadequate. The Center also has developed substantial evidence that there are “less discriminatory alternatives” available to the LAPD, since literally hundreds of major law enforcement agencies throughout the country successfully recruit, select, train, and deploy women to routine police patrol assignments without these exclusionary height and agility requirements.

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