The truth is that many of the employment discrimination suits coming to court today could have been avoided. Particularly the lawsuits that follow a reduction in force ("RIF").
When people are let go, lawsuits alleging age, race or gender discrimination soon follow. And - too often - when plaintiffs' statistical expert submits his or her report, management is genuinely surprised. Surprised because they thought the selection procedures they used were objective. Surprised because they thought they had built in every reasonable safeguard. And from our point of view, surprised because they're seeing these statistical results for the first time. That should never happen.
Proper statistical pre-testing takes the element of surprise out of the RIF process. We have helped manage many reductions in force. How? It's simple. Before any pink slips go out, we determine whether or not the RIF you're planning will provide statistical support for a discrimination charge. We can't tell you who will sue. But we can tell you whether the RIF list you've put together will or will not support their case if they do.
The Supreme Court has clearly specified the statistical criteria for a judgment of discrimination. In two landmark cases - Castaneda v. Partida and U.S. v. Hazelwood School District the Supreme Court ad criteria for an inference of employment discrimination. To prevail, plaintiff must demonstrate that the disparity or disproportion complained of is at least "two standard deviations" in width. Working with you, we run the required "two standard deviation" tests on the RIF list before you finalize it.