In some circumstances an employer may discriminate on the basis of sex without breaking the Massachusetts anti-discrimination law. As justification, the employer needs to show that being a woman — or, indeed, a man — is a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ). In other words, the very nature of the particular job requires a woman not a man, or a man not a woman.
In Pugsley v. Boston Police Department the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) explained what sort of evidence will not pass muster when using sex as a BFOQ. The plaintiff, Sean Pugsley, had scored very well on the police academy exam but the Boston Police Department did not pick him. It did, however, hire women who had scored less well than Mr.Pugsley because they were, well, women. The department’s reason was statistical disparity: About 13% of the officers were female whereas “the number of females involved in police contact as a result of alleged criminal activity” was about 18%.
Evidence of this caliber will not suffice. The SJC stated that “statistical disparities, without more, will generally be insufficient to support a BFOQ” (emphasis added). What sort of “more” can an employer not do without? In a footnote the Court suggested that employers should target their recruitment efforts more carefully before resorting to the blunt tool of overt sex discrimination. So statistics plus evidence of more subtle, less obvious efforts to discriminate, are probably OK.
One aspect of the statistical disparity that did not come up was the corollary of the fact that only 18% of those individuals who find themselves interacting with Boston police officers for “alleged criminal activity” are women. Therefore 82% are male. If the statistics for Boston resemble those for Massachusetts as a whole and women and men each make up about 50% of the population, an objective observer* would expect the rates of criminal activity to be 50:50 as well.
So it is clear from the statistics that female crooks are offending with impunity while their male counterparts are being deliberately targeted because of the anti-male bias of Boston’s overwhelmingly male police force, or are suffering from the form of discrimination known as disparate impact. After all, what other possible explanation could there be?
* From a different dimension
Peter Vickery, Esq., 