Commonwealth v. O'Neill

100 F.R.D. 354, 35 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1776, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11613
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedNovember 17, 1983
DocketCiv. A. No. 70-3500
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 100 F.R.D. 354 (Commonwealth v. O'Neill) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. O'Neill, 100 F.R.D. 354, 35 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1776, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11613 (E.D. Pa. 1983).

Opinion

[355]*355MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

FULLAM, District Judge.

More than 13 years ago, plaintiffs brought this action to remedy perceived discrimination against blacks in the hiring and promotional practices of the Philadelphia Police Department. After years of litigation, addressed sequentially to various aspects of the overall problem, the parties have now presented for approval a proposed Consent Decree which would grant various forms of class-wide relief, and which would end the litigation.

The background may appropriately be summarized as follows: The litigation stemmed from a review by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Justice, and others, of some remarkable statistics. In the early 1960s, more than 20% of Philadelphia’s police force were black. In 1966, 27.6% of the new appointees to the police force were black. At that point, responsibility for the selection process was transferred from the Civil Service Commission to the Police Department itself. By 1970, the percentage of black appointees had dropped to 7.7% in Philadelphia, whereas other major cities were experiencing marked increases in the percentage of successful black applicants for police appointments.

The initial round of litigation addressed the hiring process. After extensive hearings, this court concluded, in 1972, that the entrance examination had a disparate impact upon blacks, but had not been validated as job-related. The net result of this conclusion was the retention, by the City, of Educational Testing Service to develop and validate a new entrance examination. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. O’Neill, 348 F.Supp. 1084 (E.D.Pa.1972), aff’d in part, 473 F.2d 1029 (3d Cir.1973). Since that time, the City has worked closely with its outside consultants and its own personnel experts in developing and monitoring, and seeking to improve the quality of, the police entrance examination.

Another round of litigation concerned itself with the background investigation process, which tended to screen out a disproportionately high percentage of blacks who had passed the written entrance examination. This court ultimately determined that certain disqualifying factors being relied upon in the selection process had a discriminatory impact on blacks, and were plainly not job-related. In addition to prohibiting reliance upon these non-job-related factors, this court, provided additional relief, including a requirement of minority participation in the screening decisions, consultation with outside experts with a view toward revising and improving the screening criteria, and a review procedure. The review procedure contemplated that a rejected applicant would have the right of review by a three-person panel (two members of the Police Department, one of whom would be a member of the racial minority, and an impartial outside expert). A unanimous decision by this review panel would be final. A nonunanimous rejection would be appealable to this court for a determination as to whether the applicant’s constitutional rights were being violated. (In practice, virtually all of the panel’s decisions were unanimous; the few exceptions will be eligible for reconsideration, under the terms of the proposed consent decree.)

Another round of litigation challenged certain promotional examinations and procedures. In a 1979 decision, this court determined that the challenged examinations were valid. That litigation did not address itself to the examination for promotion to lieutenant.

In addition to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the plaintiffs initially consisted of a class of past and future black applicants to the Police Department, and black members of the Police Department who had, or might in the future, apply for promotions. The defendants were the City of Philadelphia, its mayor, its police commissioner and personnel director. Early in the litigation, the Guardian Civic League, an organization whose members are black police officers of the City of Philadelphia, was permitted to intervene as a plaintiff. And, on August 10, 1971, the Fraternal Order of [356]*356Police, Lodge No. 5, was also permitted to intervene.

The precise status of the Fraternal Order of Police in this litigation can perhaps best be described as indeterminate. In its initial petition to intervene, the FOP and certain of its officers and members sought intervention “on behalf of all policemen of the Police Department, white and black, and all potential applicants for the Police Department, white and black.” The stated purpose of the intervention-’was to protect the interests of all members of the Police Department by opposing, for the most part, the relief being sought by the plaintiffs. The intervenors asserted that their interests were not being adequately represented by the defendants. Thus, the application for intervention, taken literally, would have removed a large segment of the plaintiff class and re-aligned it as a defendant class. Needless to say, the order permitting intervention limited the FOP’s role to representation of “the members of the class referred to in the Complaint [in a companion action, later consolidated, seeking injunctive relief] who did not wish to be members of the class represented by plaintiffs.”

The FOP’s active participation in the litigation was quite limited. Its principal efforts were directed to attempting to prevent plaintiffs from gaining access to personnel records of the Police Department, and to supporting the original defendants in their opposition to various forms of affirmative relief ultimately granted plaintiffs. Counsel for the FOP attended hearings only sporadically, and primarily as an observer.

The seeming ambivalence of the FOP throughout this litigation is understandable: The FOP professed support for the long-range goals of the plaintiffs, and many of its members were plaintiffs.

Beginning in 1980, serious settlement negotiations between the plaintiffs, the Guardian Civic League, and the defendants, were pursued. Various drafts of proposed consent decrees were circulated from time to time, and many settlement conferences were held. The end product of this lengthy process is the proposed Decree now before the court for approval.

I. STANDARDS FOR APPROVAL; BURDEN OF PROOF

The appropriate standards by which a proposed consent decree should be evaluated are well known, and need not be elaborately re-stated here. Before approving a proposed consent decree, the court must be satisfied that it is “fair, adequate and reasonable, and is not the result of collusion between the parties.” Cotton v. Hinton, 559 F.2d 1326, 1330 (5th Cir.1977). Because a consent decree operates as a judgment, and will have future consequences, the court must also make certain that it does not violate public policy, and is not illegal or unfair. See, e.g., Patterson v. Newspaper and Mail Delivery Union, 514 F.2d 767 (2d Cir.1975), cert. denied, 427 U.S. 911, 96 S.Ct. 3198, 49 L.Ed.2d 1203 (1976).

The court is required to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the respective positions of the litigants, the probable outcome in the absence of a settlement, the rights and positions of other parties affected by the proposed decree, and the number and quality of objections expressed.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
100 F.R.D. 354, 35 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1776, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11613, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-oneill-paed-1983.