Disparate impact and the quota debates: Law, labor market sociology, and equal employment policies

Bringing sociological theory and research to bear on the "quota debates" do gging discussion of federal civil rights legislation in the early 1990s, th is article highlights sociology's role in shaping employment law and shows how apparently technical legal arguments about allocating burdens of proof affect labor market resource allocation among the classes, races, and gende rs. Contrasting institutional-sociological with liberal-legal concepts of d iscrimination, the article shows why disparate impact theory has been the m ost sociological approach to Title VII enforcement. It also shows how dispa rate impact-a theory and method for establishing legally cognizable employm ent discrimination injurious to women and minorities-is, and is not, relate d to affirmative action-a policy encompassing a broad range of procedures i ntended to provide positive consideration to members of groups discriminate d against in the past. Finally, a competing incentive framework is used to show that, although disparate impact creates some incentives for employers to adopt quota hiring, such incentives are counter-balanced by major incent ives working against race- and gender-based quotas. Major counterincentives stem from disparate impact itself, from other aspects of equal employment law, and from organizational goals shaping business response to the legal e nvironment.