UC Policy & Neutrality

[Rick Duncan]

Consider the following hypo concerning the religious neutrality of UC's policy.
 
Assume John Doe, the owner of the largest business in California--Doe Motor Company, an automobile business that hires lawyers, business executives, engineers, as well as many well-paid blue collar assembly line workers--hears about the UC admissions policy and decides it is unfair to the young men and young women who graduate from schools whose textbooks have been disapproved by UC. Doe knows these disapproved schools turn out well-educated and hard-working students, because some of his best employees are alumni of these schools. 
 
Mr. Doe, who is an agnostic whose own children attend public schools, nevertheless believes the UC policy has seriously harmed many outstanding high school graduates from the disapproved schools and he decides to do something to help compensate for the harm.
He announces that his company will give a strong preference to job applicants who have graduated from one of the high schools whose textbooks have been disapproved by UC. 
 
Again, he has no religious ax to grind here. His purpose is solely to help those who have been harmed and stigmatized by the UC policy. He is using exactly the same line UC has employed--UC draws the line and admits students who graduate from a school north of the line. Doe uses the same line and hires only applicants who have graduated from a school south of the line.
 
Here is my question to the legal scholars on this list. Is Mr. Doe's company guilty of employment discrimination on the basis of religion? If the line is religiously neutral when UC draws it for academic quality purposes, is it not also neutral when Doe uses the same line for compensatory employment purposes?
 
Rick Duncan




Rick Duncan 
Welpton Professor of Law 
University of Nebraska College of Law 
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered."  --The Prisoner
		
---------------------------------
 Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20050831/2153447d/attachment.htm