Disparate Impact” is a legal term used by progressive lawyers hell bent on social engineering.   The origin of the term actually comes from the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), and despite it’s application the interpretation of law makes no sense.
Eric Holder Finger PointThe intent of “Disparate Impact” is to engineer outcomes, not opportunity as one would think.
The term applies to consequences not origination or intent.
It was first thought up within a progressive think-tank as a way to force civil rights outcomes.  The concept was then delivered to the EEOC as a tool to leverage their social justice goal, force employers to hire illegal aliens.     It has been an open secret for well over a decade.
Example:   Under the legal definition of “Disparate Impact” you cannot use employment eligibility (work authorization) as a qualification for employment – Why?  Because more Hispanics, compared to other applicants, will be impacted as ineligible by the employment screening.   Ergo the employment eligibility screen itself, checking lawful residency, creates a “disparate impact” against Hispanics and is therefore illegal.
However, it was not the absurd nature of the legal application which upset the Federal Judge in this EEOC case;  it was the fact the EEOC itself uses the EXACT SAME pre-employment screening (credit check) it was suing a company for using.
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Judicial Opinion – KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge:

In this case the EEOC sued the defendants for using the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses. The EEOC’s personnel handbook recites that “[o]verdue just debts increase temptation to commit illegal or unethical acts as a means of gaining funds to meet financial obligations.” Because of that concern, the EEOC runs credit checks on applicants for 84 of the agency’s 97 positions. The defendants (collectively, “Kaplan”) have the same concern; and thus Kaplan runs credit checks on applicants for positions that provide access to students’ financial-loan information, among other positions. For that practice, the EEOC sued Kaplan.   (ruling link)

(Via Wall Street Journal)   A big story of President Obama’s second term is how federal courts are overturning executive abuses. But sometimes the prosecution is so outrageous, and the legal smackdown so sublime, that the episode deserves special recognition.
Such is the case with last week’s hilariously caustic rebuke of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The EEOC had sued Kaplan, the for-profit education company, for using “the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses,” as Judge Raymond Kethledge cheekily put it in the first sentence of his ruling in EEOC v. Kaplan.
Despite its own practices, the Obama EEOC has made a cause of suing private companies because it claims that credit and criminal background checks discriminate against minorities. In 2012 the agency issued “guidance” to get companies to think twice before using criminal checks but stopped short of doing the same for credit checks.  (read more)

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