This is that

This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 3rd, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Disparate Impact Analysis is at the Supreme Court.

The idea is that even though your business didn't engage in discrimination against

protected groups, the screening methods you've used had a disproportionately negative impact

on those groups.

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson discusses what that means for the

High Court.

It came in especially in the employment area and it was the result of challenges to hiring standards. For example, a hiring

standard of you have to be able to lift 75 pounds would have disparate impact against many women. A standard that were only taking

people who can pass this particular written test might have disparate impact against minorities

who don't do as well on that test.

And so when the Supreme Court approved disparate impact in employment, it led to waves of litigation, knocking out various

hiring practices which continued to the present day. The federal government, for example, believes

that asking people about their criminal records

when they're applying for a job with you will often have disparate impact and so it

should come under close and skeptical scrutiny and employers should be forced to

stop a lot of their inquiries about

criminal records.

So that's disparate impact in employment.

We have heard much less because there's a much shakier legal basis for disparate impact claims in areas

...