Mr. Chief Justice Burger

delivered the opinion of the Court.

We granted the writ in this case to resolve the question whether an employer is prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, from requiring a high school edu*426cation or passing of a standardized general intelligence test as a condition of employment in or transfer to jobs when (a) neither standard is shown to be significantly related to successful job performance, (b) both requirements operate to disqualify Negroes at a substantially higher rate than white applicants, and (c) the jobs in question formerly had been filled only by white employees as part of a longstanding practice of giving preference to whites.1

Congress provided, in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for class actions for enforcement of provisions of the Act and this proceeding was brought by a group of incumbent Negro employees against Duke Power Company. All the petitioners are employed at the Company’s Dan River Steam Station, a power generating facility located at Draper, North Carolina. At the time this action was instituted, the Company had 95 employees at the Dan River Station, 14 of whom were Negroes; 13 of these are petitioners here.

The District Court found that prior to July 2, 1965, the effective date of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the *427Company openly discriminated on the basis of race in the hiring and assigning of employees at its Dan River plant. The plant was organized into five operating departments: (1) Labor, (2) Coal Handling, (3) Operations, (4) Maintenance, and (5) Laboratory and Test. Negroes were employed only in the Labor Department where the highest paying jobs paid less than the lowest paying jobs in the other four “operating” departments in which only whites were employed.2 Promotions were normally made within each department on the basis of job seniority. Transferees into a department usually began in the lowest position.

In 1955 the Company instituted a policy of requiring a high school education for initial assignment to any department except Labor, and for transfer from the Coal Handling to any “inside” department (Operations, Maintenance, or Laboratory). When the Company abandoned its policy of restricting Negroes to the Labor Department in 1965, completion of high school also was made a prerequisite to transfer from Labor to any other department. From the time the high school requirement was instituted to the time of trial, however, white employees hired before the time of the high school education requirement continued to perform satisfactorily and achieve promotions in the “operating” departments. Findings on this score are not challenged.

The Company added a further requirement for new employees on July 2, 1965, the date on which Title VII became effective. To qualify for placement in any but the Labor Department it became necessary to register satisfactory scores on two professionally prepared apti*428tude tests, as well as to have a high school education. Completion of high school alone continued to render employees eligible for transfer to the four desirable departments from which Negroes had been excluded if the incumbent had been employed prior to the time of the new requirement. In September 1965 the Company began to permit incumbent employees who lacked a high school education to qualify for transfer from Labor or Coal Handling to an “inside” job by passing two tests— the Wonder lie Personnel Test, which purports to measure general intelligence, and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test. Neither was directed or intended to measure the ability to learn to perform a particular job or category of jobs. The requisite scores used for both initial hiring and transfer approximated the national median for high school graduates.3

The District Court had found that while the Company previously followed a policy of overt racial discrimination in a period prior to the Act, such conduct had ceased. The District Court also concluded that Title VII was intended to be prospective only and, consequently, the impact of prior inequities was beyond the reach of corrective action authorized by the Act.

The Court of Appeals was confronted with a question of first impression, as are we, concerning the meaning of Title VII. After careful analysis a majority of that court concluded that a subjective test of the employer’s intent should govern, particularly in a close case, and that in this case there was no showing of a discriminatory purpose in the adoption of the diploma and test requirements. On this basis, the Court of Appeals concluded there was no violation of the Act.

*429The Court of Appeals reversed the District Court in part, rejecting the holding that residual discrimination arising from prior employment practices was insulated from remedial action.4 The Court of Appeals noted, however, that the District Court was correct in its conclusion that there was no showing of a racial purpose or invidious intent in the adoption of the high school diploma requirement or general intelligence test and that these standards had been applied fairly to whites and Negroes alike. It held that, in the absence of a discriminatory purpose, use of such requirements was permitted by the Act. In so doing, the Court of Appeals rejected the claim that because these two requirements operated to render ineligible a markedly disproportionate number of Negroes, they were unlawful under Title VII unless shown to be job related.5 We granted the writ on these claims. 399 U. S. 926.

The objective of Congress in the enactment of Title VII is plain from the language of the statute. It was to achieve equality of employment opportunities and re*430move barriers that have operated in the past to favor an identifiable group of white employees over other employees. Under the Act, practices, procedures, or tests neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms of intent, cannot be maintained if they operate to “freeze” the status quo of prior discriminatory employment practices.

The Court of Appeals’ opinion, and the partial dissent, agreed that, on the record in the present case, “whites register far better on the Company’s alternative requirements” than Negroes.6 420 F. 2d 1225, 1239 n. 6. This consequence would appear to be directly traceable to race. Basic intelligence must have the means of articulation to manifest itself fairly in a testing process. Because they are Negroes, petitioners have long received inferior education in segregated schools and this Court expressly recognized these differences in Gaston County v. United States, 395 U. S. 285 (1969). There, because of the inferior education received by Negroes in North Carolina, this Court barred the institution of a literacy test for voter registration on the ground that the test would abridge the right to vote indirectly on account of race. Congress did not intend by Title VII, however, to guarantee a job to every person regardless of qualifications. In short, the Act does not command that any *431person be hired simply because he was formerly the subject of discrimination, or because he is a member of a minority group. Discriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed. What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification.

Congress has now provided that tests or criteria for employment or promotion may not provide equality of opportunity merely in the sense of the fabled offer of milk to the stork and the fox. On the contrary, Congress has now required that the posture and condition of the job-seeker be taken into account. It has — to resort again to the fable — provided that the vessel in which the milk is proffered be one all seekers can use. The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited.

On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used. Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job-performance ability. Rather, a vice president of the Company testified, the requirements were instituted on the Company’s judgment that they generally would improve the overall quality of the work force.

The evidence, however, shows that employees who have not completed high school or taken the tests have continued to perform satisfactorily and make progress in departments for which the high school and test cri*432teria are now used.7 The promotion record of present employees who would not be able to meet the new criteria thus suggests the possibility that the requirements may not be needed even for the limited purpose of preserving the avowed policy of advancement within the Company. In the context of this case, it is unnecessary to reach the question whether testing requirements that take into account capability for the next succeeding position or related future promotion might be utilized upon a showing that such long-range requirements fulfill a genuine business need. In the present case the Company has made no such showing.

The Court of Appeals held that the Company had adopted the diploma and test requirements without any “intention to discriminate against Negro employees.” 420 F. 2d, at 1232. We do not suggest that either the District Court or the Court of Appeals erred in examining the employer’s intent; but good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as “built-in headwinds” for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability.

The Company’s lack of discriminatory intent is suggested by special efforts to help the undereducated employees through Company financing of two-thirds the cost of tuition for high school training. But Congress directed the thrust of the Act to the consequences of employment practices, not simply the motivation. More than that, Congress has placed on the employer the burden of showing that any given requirement must have a manifest relationship to the employment in question.

*433The facts of this case demonstrate the inadequacy of broad and general testing devices as well as the infirmity of using diplomas or degrees as fixed measures of capability. History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.

The Company contends that its general intelligence tests are specifically permitted by § 703 (h) of the Act.8 That section authorizes the use of “any professionally developed ability test” that is not “designed, intended or used to discriminate because of race . . . .” (Emphasis added.)

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, having enforcement responsibility, has issued guidelines interpreting § 703 (h) to permit only the use of job-related tests.9 The administrative interpretation of the *434Act by the enforcing agency is entitled to great deference. See, e. g., United States v. City of Chicago, 400 U. S. 8 (1970); Udall v. Tallman, 380 U. S. 1 (1965); Power Reactor Co. v. Electricians, 367 U. S. 396 (1961). Since the Act and its legislative history support the Commission’s construction, this affords good reason to treat the guidelines as expressing the will of Congress.

Section 703 (h) was not contained in the House version of the Civil Rights Act but was added in the Senate during extended debate. For a period, debate revolved around claims that the bill as proposed would prohibit all testing and force employers to hire unqualified persons simply because they were part of a group formerly subject to job discrimination.10 Proponents of Title VII sought throughout the debate to assure the critics that the Act would have no effect on job-related tests. Senators Case of New Jersey and Clark of Pennsylvania, comanagers of the bill on the Senate floor, issued a memorandum explaining that the proposed Title VII “expressly protects the employer’s right to insist that any prospective applicant, Negro or white, must meet the applicable job qualifications. Indeed, the very purpose of title VII is to promote hiring on the basis of job qualifications, rather than on the basis of race or color.” 110 Cong. Rec. 7247.11 (Emphasis added.) Despite *435these assurances, Senator Tower of Texas introduced an amendment authorizing “professionally developed ability tests.” Proponents of Title VII opposed the amendment because, as written, it would permit an employer to give any test, “whether it was a good test or not, so long as it was professionally designed. Discrimination could actually exist under the guise of compliance with the statute.” 110 Cong. Rec. 13504 (remarks of Sen. Case).

The amendment was defeated and two days later Senator Tower offered a substitute amendment which was adopted verbatim and is now the testing provision of § 703 (h). Speaking for the supporters of Title VII, Senator Humphrey, who had vigorously opposed the first amendment, endorsed the substitute amendment, stating: “Senators on both sides of the aisle who were deeply interested in title VII have examined the text of this *436amendment and have found it to be in accord with the intent and purpose of that title.” 110 Cong. Rec. 13724. The amendment was then adopted.12 From the sum of the legislative history relevant in this case, the conclusion is inescapable that the EEOC's construction of § 703 (h) to require that employment tests be job related comports with congressional intent.

Nothing in the Act precludes the use of testing or measuring procedures; obviously they are useful. What Congress has forbidden is giving these devices and mechanisms controlling force unless they are demonstrably a reasonable measure of job performance. Congress has not commanded that the less qualified be preferred over the better qualified simply because of minority origins. Far from disparaging job qualifications as such, Congress has made such qualifications the controlling factor, so that race, religion, nationality, and sex become irrelevant. What Congress has commanded is that any tests used must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is, as to that portion of the judgment appealed from, reversed.

Mr. Justice Brennan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge-

This is the paradigmatic “hard” case, and we have labored for many months to reach the right result. On appeal, Defendant, Joe’s Stone Crab, Inc. (“Joe’s”), challenges the district court’s entry of judgment in favor of Plaintiff, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the “EEOC”), on its gender-based disparate impact claims under Title VII. Joe’s is a landmark Miami Beach seafood restaurant which from 1986 to 1990 hired 108 male food servers and zero female food servers. After the EEOC filed its discrimination charge in June 1991, Joe’s hired 88 food servers from 1991 to 1995, nineteen, or roughly 21.7%, of whom were female. The district court concluded that while Joe’s was not liable for intentional discrimination, it was liable for disparate impact discrimination based on these statistical disparities. After thorough review, we vacate the district court judgment, and remand for reconsideration of the EEOC’s *1268intentional discrimination claim consistent with this opinion.

In our view, the facts of this case render a disparate impact finding inappropriate. A disparate impact claim requires the identification of a specific, facially-neutral, employment practice causally responsible for an identified statistical disparity. On this record, the district court has identified no facially-neutral practice responsible for the gender disparity in Joe’s food server population and we can find none. However, some of the district court’s subsidiary findings suggest that there may have been facially-discriminatory practices of Joe’s that were responsible for the identified hiring disparity, although the district court expressly rejected the EEOC’s intentional discrimination claim in summary fashion. Several powerful prudential considerations, including the fact that the record is replete with conflicting witness testimony permitting more than one resolution of this claim, and the fact that some of the district court’s subsidiary factual findings are in apparent conflict with its conclusion that Joe’s was not liable for intentional discrimination, persuade us that the wisest course is a remand to the district court so that it may consider further its factual findings and conclusions of law in light of this opinion.

I.

The facts of this case are reasonably straightforward and are fully outlined by the district court in EEOC v. Joe’s Stone Crab, Inc., 969 F.Supp. 727 (S.D.Fla.1997). Joe’s Stone Crab, Inc. is a fourth-generation, family-owned seafood restaurant and Miami Beach landmark. During the stone crab season, which lasts from October to May, the restaurant is extremely busy— serving up to 1450 patrons each weeknight and up to 1800 patrons each weekend night. Today, the restaurant employs between 230 and 260 employees; of those, approximately 70 are food servers. Throughout its history, Joe’s has experienced extremely low food server turnover — a result of Joe’s family ethos, generous salary and benefits package, and its seven-month employment season. From 1950 onward, however, the food servers have been almost exclusively male.

On June 25, 1991, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) filed a discrimination charge, under sections 706 and 707 of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et. seq., alleging that Joe’s discriminated on the basis of sex in the hiring and recruiting of food servers. On April 17, 1992, the EEOC issued its Decision, finding a pattern and practice of intentional sex discrimination in Joe’s hiring and recruiting practices. Specifically, the EEOC determined that a word-of-mouth recruiting system and Joe’s reputation for hiring only male food servers resulted in almost no women actually applying for food server positions at Joe’s. The EEOC also found that Joe’s subjective hiring practices were responsible for the gross statistical disparity between the percentage of female food servers in the Miami Beach community and the percentage of female food servers working at Joe’s. As required by Title VII, see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(b), the EEOC and Joe’s attempted to conciliate the Decision’s findings but were unsuccessful.

On June 8, 1993, the EEOC filed a complaint in the Southern District of Florida alleging that Joe’s violated Title VII through both intentional disparate treatment discrimination as well as unintentional disparate impact discrimination. The gravamen of the complaint centered around the EEOC’s findings with respect to Joe’s hiring and recruiting practices for food servers. The EEOC sought permanent injunctive relief, back pay, and prejudgment interest for qualified claimants.1 Over fifteen days interspersed from August 1996 to December 1996, the district *1269court held a liability bench trial. The analysis at trial focused on two discrete time periods: first, the pre-EEOC charge period from 1986 to 1990; and finally, the post-EEOC charge period from 1991 to 1995. On'July 3, 1997, the district court issued a partial final judgment — making a series of factual findings with respect to Joe’s employment practices. See Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 727-35.

To hire new food servers, Joe’s conducts a “roll call” every year on the second Tuesday in October. Although Joe’s rarely advertises, significantly, the district court found that the roll call is “widely known throughout the local food server community,” and typically attracts over 100 applicants for only a limited number of slots. Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 733. At a typical roll call, each applicant completes a written application and an individual interview. Selected applicants then enter a three-day training program where they shadow experienced servers. Upon successful completion of the program, they then become permanent hires. See id.

Until the EEOC’s charge, roll call interviews and hiring selections were handled exclusively by the daytime maitre d’ with occasional interview assistance from other staff members.2 Hiring decisions were made by the daytime maitre d’ on the basis of four subjective factors (appearance, articulation, attitude, and experience) and without upper management supervision or the benefit of instructive written or verbal policies. See id. After the EEOC’s discrimination charge in 1991, Joe’s changed its roll call format somewhat. All applicant interviews were conducted by three members of Joe’s management.3 In addition, each applicant was required to take and pass a “tray test,” which involved the lifting and carrying of a loaded serving tray, or else be automatically disqualified from a food server position. The district court found the tray test to be a “legitimate indicator of an individual’s ability to perform an essential component of a food server’s job at Joe’s,” id., and that “women have the physical strength to carry serving trays,” id. at 732.

In addition to its description of Joe’s hiring process, the district court also made several subsidiary findings relating to the historical operation of the roll call system. The district court observed that while “women have predominated as owner/managers,” “most of Joe’s female employees have worked in positions traditionally viewed as ‘women’s jobs,’ e.g., as cashiers or laundry workers. Food servers generally have been male.” Id. at 731. Although Joe’s hired female food servers during World War II, most of these positions “reverted to men at the’conclusion of the war.” Id. Further, the district court found that, “[f|rom 1950 on, the food serving staff has been almost exclusively male. Indeed, one striking exception proves the rule. Dotty Malone worked as a food server at Joe’s for seventeen years, and for most of this time she was the lone female on a serving staff that ranged between twenty-four and thirty-two.” Id.

In explaining this historical dearth of female food servers, the district court found that Joe’s maintained an “Old World” European tradition, in which the highest level of food service is performed *1270by men, in order to create an ambience of “fine dining” for its customers. Id. at 733. The district court elaborated:

The evidence presented at trial does not establish that Joe’s management had an express policy of excluding women from food server positions. To the contrary, the evidence portrays owner/managers who have been courageous in opposing overt discrimination. For example, Joe’s was picketed for two years when the owners insisted on hiring African-American employees who had been excluded from union membership because of race. What the evidence in this case does prove is that Joe’s management acquiesced in and gave silent approbation to the notion that male food servers were preferable to female food servers.

Id. at 731. As evidence, for this finding, the district court cited three pieces of witness testimony. First, the district court pointed to the testimony of Grace Weiss, Joe’s owner, who stated, “I cannot explain the predominance of male servers, but perhaps it has to do with the very heavy trays to be carried, the ambience of the restaurant, and the extremely low turnover in servers.” Id. at 731-32 (emphasis added by the district court). Second, the district court highlighted the testimony of Roy Garrett, a longtime maitre d’ of Joe’s with hiring authority, who explained that Joe’s had a “tradition” that food server positions were “a male server type of job”:

As I said before, we had very few female applicants over the years. It was sort of a tradition.... It was always tradition from the time I arrived there that it was a male server type of job. And until just recently when we became aware that we had to do other things, ... originally it was traditionally a male place. We always had women that were qualified women .... Traditionally, I mean, it’s just some restaurants, when you walk in, you know there are going to be women waitresses, other restaurants you know it is going to be male waiters.

Id. at 732 (emphasis added).4 Finally, the district court referred to the testimony of Joe’s own restaurant industry expert, Karen McNeil, for a historical explanation of the “male-only” server tradition.

It has been an attitude and standard, it comes from Europe. In all of Europe you will find in all of the grade three restaurants in Europe, there is an impression that service at that high level is the environment of men, and that it ought to be that way. And I think that that attitude a few decades ago came and was felt a little bit here in this country.... Those [European] opinions and those sensibilities, I think were in fact carried here by restauranteurs who hoped to create something serious. If you wanted to create a serious restaurant that would become known in the community, that would become one of the community’s great restaurants, you did what they did in Europe, you modeled yourself after them. I don’t think anybody thought about it. They said, well, men did it there. It tended to be men here, too, who had those skill.sets, and so men were [sic] automatically became the labor pool.

Id. The district court added that “Joe’s [had] sought to emulate Old World traditions by. creating an ambience in which tuxedo-clad men served its distinctive menu.” Id.

With this historical background in place, the district court then focused on Joe’s female hiring statistics for the relevant pre- and post-charge periods. For the pre-charge period of 1986-1990, the number of female food server applicants at Joe’s annual hiring roll calls was minuscule. While there is little available evidence as to the actual numbers of female applicants at these roll calls (because Joe’s *1271historically did not retain any employment data from its roll calls), the district court determined, and both parties agreed, that during this period, no more than two or three women per year (or, at most, 3% of the overall applicant class) actually attended the roll calls. - See id. at 733. In that same period, 108 new male food servers were hired while zero women were hired. See id. During the post-charge period (from 1991 to 1995), many more women (in all, 22% of the actual applicant pool) applied for food server positions. Of Joe’s 88 new food server hires during this period, 19 were women. These post-charge figures translate into a female hiring percentage of 21.7% — -a percentage almost exactly proportional to the percentage of females in the actual applicant pool. See id. at 733-34. Joe’s female applicant flow data for the post-charge period breaks down the following way:

Season Women applicants Women hired

1991-92 15.1% 20.0%

1992-93 21.9% 22.7%

1993-94 23.0% 10.5%

1994-95 26.8% 35.3%

Oct. — Dec.1995 23.3% 20.0%

22.02% 21.7% Average

Id. at 734.

However, in making its findings, the district court found this actual applicant flow data “unreliable because it is skewed.” Id. at 734. Relying on hearsay trial testimony from local female food servers, the district court found that Joe’s public reputation for not hiring women encouraged women to self-select out of the hiring process— thereby skewing the actual applicant flow.5 See id. at 733-34. The district court explained:

In the preceding findings, the court held that Joe’s reputation in the community, which reflected the restaurant’s historical hiring practice, led potential female applicants not to apply for server positions. Joe’s reputation, therefore, was largely responsible for the gender skew in the pool of applicants at the annual roll call. It is well-settled that an employer’s reputation for discriminatory hiring practices can lead to a self-selected applicant pool not reflective of the actually available labor pool. Quite irrespective of the intentions of the employer, a rational qualified female candidate is likely to self-select out of the application process, declining to make what she considers a “futile gesture.” Thus,-the existence of such a reputation is highly relevant to whether Joe’s actual applicant flow data reflects the available labor pool. Put more narrowly, evidence *1272of Joe’s reputation in.the food serving community was admitted as highly relevant to whether, how, and why would-be applicants were chilled from applying for traditionally male jobs. .While Joe’s vehemently. contested the admissibility of this reputation evidence, its objections fall wide of the mark. They presuppose that evidence of Joe’s reputation was offered as proof of conduct consistent with the reputation,, as proof of Joe’s hiring practices themselves, or as proof of bad character or intent to discriminate. None of these is the case. Evidence of Joe’s reputation was admitted solely to establish the existence of the reputation, and not for any other purpose.

Id. at 736 (internal citations omitted). Although the district court noted that female food server applications to Joe’s dramatically increased as a result of publicity about the EEOC charge, it still found Joe’s post-charge applicant pool data (depicting a female applicant pool of 22%) unreliable after comparing' it with hiring rates, between 30% and 40% female, for other area seafood restaurants.6 See id. at 734.

Having found the actual applicant pool data wholly unreliable, the district court discarded it and then set about selecting alternative non-applicant labor market data. The EEOC’s expert witness, a labor economist, suggested a qualified female labor pool of 44.1% based on 1990 census data for female food servers living and/or working in the Miami Beach area (a labor pool which included cocktail and buffet servers). See id. at 734-35. Not surprisingly, the district court rejected this figure in part because there was no demonstration that this female labor pool necessarily was qualified to work at Joe’s. Instead, the district court “refined” the relevant labor pool to include all female servers who lived or worked on Miami Beach and earned between $25,000 and $50,000 — thereby “using past earning capacity as a proxy for experience, and by extension, experience as a proxy for qualification.” Id. at 735. Solely based on this alternative methodology, the district court was able to find “that at all relevant times, 3119% of the available labor pool has been female.” Id.

With these findings in place, the district court then drew two pertinent conclusions of law. First, the district court summarily rejected the EEOC’s disparate treatment claims without analysis, stating only that “the court finds that the EEOC has not met its burden of proof under disparate treatment analysis.” Id. at 735. The only other mention of the disparate treatment claims is found in the introduction of the district court’s opinion. There, the district court unambiguously states: “[biased on an evaluation of the evidence, the court finds that the EEOC has not proven intentional discrimination.” Id. at 730. Second, however, the district court determined that Joe’s was liable for disparate impact discrimination.7 See id. Specifically, the district court found that “the challenged employment practice in this case ..., [Joe’s] undirected and undisciplined delegation of hiring authority to subordinate staff,” id. at 738, was responsible for the statistical disparity between the 31.9% female “available” labor pool and Joe’s female hiring rates in the pre-charge (0%) and post-charge (21.7%) periods, id. at 739-40. The district court then entered a partial judgment of liability in favor of the EEOC.

*1273On April 15, 1998, a bench trial was held on the remedies portion. The EEOC presented five female plaintiffs who unsuccessfully applied for food server positions at Joe’s in the 1990’s. They testified that they would have applied to Joe’s at an earlier juncture but for the fact that they knew applying was futile based on Joe’s male-only reputation. The. district court awarded four of them backpay relief plus prejudgment interest. The district court also ordered extensive injunctive relief through the year 2001 that required Joe’s to adopt a statement of non-discrimination in the hiring of food servers, comply "with the district court’s monitoring of Joe’s future hiring and recruiting practices (including its public advertising of hiring roll-calls), allow the supervision of each roll-call by a court-appointed monitor, permit the introduction of a standardized tray test at the roll-call, and provide mandatory training sessions with an industrial psychologist for all of Joe’s hiring decisionmakers.

II.

The first and central issue in this appeal is whether the district court erred in finding that the EEOC had established disparate impact discrimination.8 We review the district court’s conclusions of law de novo, and its factual findings for clear error. See Central State Transit & Leasing Corp. v. Jones Boat Yard, Inc., 206 F.3d 1373, 1376 (11th Cir.2000); Hill v. Seaboard Coast Line R.R. Co., 885 F.2d 804, 812 (11th Cir.1989) (citing Eastland v. Tennessee Valley Auth., 704 F.2d 613, 620 (11th Cir.1983)). In this case, where the bulk of the evidence came in the form of conflicting witness testimony, we allot even greater deference to the factfinder who is in a better position to assess the credibility of the witnesses. See Stano v. Butterworth, 51 F.3d 942, 944 (11th Cir.1995) (citing Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 575, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1512, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985)).

That said, we have struggled on appeal to find the proper resolution of this case. As we explain in detail, we believe that the district court’s factual findings simply do not support a legal conclusion that Joe’s is liable for disparate impact discrimination. Based on the district court’s findings, no specific facially-neutral employment practice of Joe’s can be causally connected to the statistical disparity between the percentage of women in the qualified labor pool and the percentage of women hired as food servers by Joe’s.

A. Disparate Impact

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an employer may be found liable for unlawful sex discrimination under any one of three discrete theories: pattern and practice discrimination, disparate treatment discrimination, or disparate impact discrimination. Both pattern and practice and disparate treatment claims require proof of discriminatory intent;9 disparate impact claims do not. See In Re Employment Litig. Against the State of Ala., 198 F.3d 1305, 1310 n. 8 (11th Cir.1999). In order to show discriminatory intent, a plaintiff must demonstrate “ ‘that the decisionmaker ... selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at least in part “because of,” not merely “in spite of,” its adverse effects on an identifiable group.’” Id. at 1321 (quoting Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 279, 99 S.Ct. 2282, 2296, 60 L.Ed.2d 870 (1979)). Therefore, in a dis*1274parate treatment case, the plaintiff bears the ultimate burden of proving that the employment action at issue was taken because of the plaintiffs sex. See Holifield v. Reno, 115 F.3d 1555, 1564-65 (11th Cir.1997). Likewise, in a pattern and practice case, the plaintiff must prove, normally through a combination of statistics and anecdotes, that discrimination is the company’s “standard operating procedure.” International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 335-36, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1977); see also Mozee v. American Commercial Marine Service Co., 940 F.2d 1036, 1051 (7th Cir.1991).

In contrast, disparate impact theory prohibits neutral employment practices which, while non-discriminatory on their face, visit an adverse, disproportionate impact on a statutorily-protected group. See Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 431, 91 S.Ct. 849, 853, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971) (explaining that Title VII “proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation”); see also In re Employment, 198 F.3d at 1311; Fitzpatrick v. City of Atlanta, 2 F.3d 1112, 1117 (11th Cir.1993). The doctrine seeks the removal of employment obstacles, not required by business necessity, which create “ ‘built-in headwinds’ ” and freeze out protected groups from job opportunities and advancement. Griffin v. Carlin, 755 F.2d 1516, 1524 (11th Cir.1985) (quoting Griggs, 401 U.S. at 431-32, 91 S.Ct. 849). As the district court correctly identified, “[t]he premise of disparate impact theory is that some employment practices, adopted without a deliberately discriminatory motive, may be the. functional equivalent of intentional discrimination.” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 735. In essence, disparate impact theory is a doctrinal surrogate for eliminating unprovable acts of intentional discrimination hidden innocuously behind facially-neutral policies or practices.

The disparate impact framework under Title VII by now is well-settled. “Since Griggs, Congress has codified the appropriate burdens of proof in a disparate impact case in 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(k) (1994), and a settled" jurisprudence has arisen to implement the methodology.” In re Employment; 198 F.3d at 1311. As correctly identified by the district court, a plaintiff in a sex discrimination suit must establish three" elements: first, that there is a significant statistical disparity between the proportion of women in the available labor pool and the proportion of women hired; second, that there is a specific, facially-neutral, employment practice which is the alleged cause of the disparity; and finally, and most critically in this case, that a causal nexus exists between the specific employment practice identified and the statistical disparity shown. Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 735. See generally MacPherson v. University of Montevallo, 922 F.2d 766, 771 (11th Cir.1991) (citing Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U.S. 642, 655-56, 109 S.Ct. 2115, 2124, 104 L.Ed.2d 733 (1989); Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U.S. 977, 994-95, 108 S.Ct. 2777, 2789, 101 L.Ed.2d 827 (1988)).

According to Title VII, “[i]n the first stage of a disparate impact case, the ‘complaining party [must] demonstrate [ ] that a respondent uses a particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.’ ” In re Employment, 198 F.3d at 1311 (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(k)(1)(A)(i)). “To ‘demonstrate’ means to ,‘meet[ ] the burdens of production and persuasion.’ ” Id. (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(m) (1994)). “In other words, in order to surmount the first hurdle in a disparate impact race discrimination case, the plaintiff must make out a prima facie case ‘that [a] facially neutral employment practice ha[s] a significantly discriminatory impact.’ ” Id. (quoting Connecticut v. Teal, 457 U.S. 440, 446, 102 S.Ct. 2525, 2530, 73 L.Ed.2d 130 (1982)). As the Supreme Court explained in Watson, “the plaintiff must offer statistical evi*1275dence of a kind and degree sufficient to show that the practice in question has caused the exclusion of applicants for jobs or promotions because of their membership in a protected group.” Watson, 487 U.S. at 994, 108 S.Ct. 2777 (emphasis added); see also Edwards v. Wallace Community College, 49 F.3d 1517, 1520 (11th Cir.1995) (observing that “[a] plaintiff must identify a specific employment practice that leads to the disparate impact”); MacPherson, 922 F.2d at 771(noting that “ ‘a plaintiff must demonstrate that it is the application of a specific or particular employment practice that has created the disparate impact under attack’ ”) (internal citation omitted).

Once each of these three elements are shown, a plaintiff has established a prima facie case of disparate impact discrimination. See Fitzpatrick, 2 F.3d at 1117; MacPherson, 922 F.2d at 771. The burden of production then shifts to the defendant to establish that the challenged employment practice serves a legitimate, non-diseriminatory business objective. See Fitzpatrick, 2 F.3d at 1117. However, even if the defendant satisfies this burden, a plaintiff may still prevail by proving that an alternative, non-discriminatory practice would have served the defendant’s stated objective equally as well. See id. at 1118.

As for the first prong of the analysis, it is critical to observe that no statistically-significant disparity exists between the percentage of women who actually applied to Joe’s and the percentage of women who were hired as servers by Joe’s. The record indicates that for the precharge period (October 1986 to June 1991) very few female food servers applied to Joe’s, “perhaps 3% of [all] applicants,” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 734, out of an actual applicant pool of between 80 and 120 people a year.10 In this five-year time period, 108 male food servers were hired and no women were hired. Despite the fact that no women were hired during this period, Joe’s pre-charge hiring rate demonstrated no significant statistical disparity because so few women actually applied for food server positions.11 For the post-charge period (July 1991 to December 1995), the district court found that, on average, 22.02% of Joe’s food server applicants were women and that Joe’s hired roughly 21.7% women for these positions. Both parties admit (as they must) that, based on this record, there is no statistieally-significant hiring disparity when the actual number of female applicants is compared to the actual number of female hires for either period.12 In other words, Joe’s hiring system did not produce a significant statistical disparity between the actual *1276percentage of women who applied to Joe’s for server positions and the percentage of women actually hired for these positions.

This insight is important for disparate impact analysis because the mere fact that Joe’s hired no women in the pre-charge period is not, alone, sufficient to impose upon Joe’s Title VII liability. To hold otherwise would be to impose liability upon Joe’s based on “bottom line” reasoning which the Supreme Court has expressly forbade. In Watson, the Supreme Court made clear that Title VII liability could not be based solely on “bottom line” statistical imbalances in an employer’s workforce. See Watson, 487 U.S. at 992, 108 S.Ct. 2777 (explaining that it is “unrealistic to suppose that employers can eliminate, or discover and explain, the myriad of innocent causes that may lead to statistical imbalances in the composition of their workforces”). The Supreme Court then further explained in Wards Cove:

Just as an employer cannot escape liability under Title VII by demonstrating that, “at the bottom line,” his work force is racially balanced (where particular, hiring practices may operate to deprive minorities of employment opportunities), a Title VII plaintiff does not make out a case of disparate impact simply by showing that, “at the bottom line,” there is racial imbalance in the work force. As a general matter, a plaintiff must demonstrate that it is the application of a specific or particular employment practice that has created the disparate impact under attack. Such a showing is an integral part of the plaintiffs prima facie case in a disparate-impact suit under Title VII.

Id., 490 U.S., at 656-57, 109 S.Ct. 2115 (internal citation omitted) (emphasis added); see also MacPherson, 922 F.2d at 771.

This disdain for “bottom line” reasoning reflects the belief that holding employers liable for statistical imbalances 'per se is inconsistent with Title VII’s plain language and statutory purpose. Section 708(3) of Title VII, 42 U.S.C.2000e-2(j), in fact, explicitly rejects the notion that employers must adopt numerical hiring quotas or “grant preferential treatment ... on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons ... in comparison with' the total number or percentage ... in any community.” Based on this statutory language, the Supreme Court has interpreted this provision of Title VII to mean that employers possess no affirmative duty to redress workforce imbalances not attributable to their own corporate conduct. See Watson, 487 U.S. at 993, 108 S.Ct. 2777 (finding that employers have no duty under Title VII to ameliorate uncaused workforce imbalances because such a legal rule is “ ‘far from the intent of Title VII’ ”) (quoting Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 449, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975) (Blackmun, J., concurring)); Furnco Construction Corp. v. Waters, 438 U.S. 567, 577-78, 98 S.Ct. 2943, 2950, 57 L.Ed.2d 957 (1978) (finding that employers are under no affirmative duty to impose hiring quotas to reflect demographic percentages). Indeed, if employers could be held liable for an unlawful disparate impact on account of statistical workforce imbalances per se, then they would be forced to use numerical quotas and other forms of preferential treatment in their hiring and promotion policies, in express contravention of Title VII,, in order to insulate themselves from the potential legal liability that would arise if their workforce demographics did not closely mirror the demographics of their surrounding community or local competitors. As a result, a plaintiff must do more than simply identify a workforce imbalance to establish a prima facie disparate impact case; it must causally connect a facially-neutral employment practice to the identified disparity.

In this case, the district court could create a statistically-significant disparity only by first throwing out the actual applicant data as a point of comparison and instead comparing the percentage of women hired for server positions at Joe’s with the percentage of women in the “qualified” labor pool. The district court recognized *1277that the number of women who actually applied for server positions at Joe’s was disproportionately low when compared with the number of women in the Miami Beach area who were seemingly qualified for such positions. There was, in fact, a significant statistical disparity between the percentage of female applicants to Joe’s during the pre- and post-charge periods and the percentage of female applicants to comparable area restaurants. Joe’s female applicant percentage of 3% and 22.02% for the pre-and post-charge periods respectively varied sharply from the female applicant percentage of area restaurants which ranged from 29.5% to 42.1%. See Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 734. As a result of these findings, the- district court found the actual applicant flow data to be “unreliable because it is skewed.” See id. It concluded that the data was skewed because of the pronounced self-selection of women out of Joe’s hiring process. See id. The district court then expressly rejected the actual applicant flow data in favor of an alternative labor pool consisting of those local food servers who were theoretically “available” and “qualified” to work at Joe’s.13 After hearing testimony from the expert witnesses of both parties, the district court arrived at an “eligible” labor pool, based on 1990 census data refined for qualification/experience on the basis of past earning capacity, which was 31.9% female. The district court- then used this alternative labor data and compared it to Joe’s actual hire statistics. By comparing Joe’s pre-charge female hiring percentage (0%) with the percentage of women in the qualified labor market (31.9%), the district court created a legally-cognizable statistical disparity.14

*1278Assuming this substitution of data was appropriate, in order to establish disparate impact discrimination, the EEOC still was required to show a causal link between some facially-neutral employment practice of Joe’s and the statistical disparity.15 In other words, the EEOC was required to prove that at least one facially neutral employment practice proximately caused the disparity. This finding is essential to avoid the potential conflation of disparate treatment and disparate impact claims. As we have noted, the central difference between disparate treatment and disparate impact claims is that disparate treatment requires a showing of discriminatory intent and disparate impact does not. See In re Employment, 198 F.3d at 1310 n. 8. In fact, the judicial doctrine of disparate impact was created in Griggs specifically to redress facially-neutral policies or practices which visited disproportionate effects on groups protected by Title VII. The Supreme Court has explained that, “[u]n-der the act, practices, procedures, or tests neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms of intent, cannot be maintained if they operate to ‘freeze’ the status quo of prior discriminatory employment practices.” Griggs, 401 U.S. at 430, 91 S.Ct. 849 (emphasis added).

Since Griggs, we are aware of no case in which a facially-discriminatory practice has been challenged successfully under a disparate impact theory. Simply put, disparate impact theory is available for the challenge of facially-neutral employment practices. See, e.g., Lanning v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transp. Auth., 181 F.3d 478, 485 (3rd Cir.1999) (finding that “plaintiffs estabhsh a prima facie case of disparate impact by demonstrating that application of a facially neutral standard has resulted in a significantly discriminatory hiring pattern”) (emphasis added). Indeed, the district court properly recognized that “[s]ex discrimination under the theory of disparate impact occurs when a facially neutral rule or practice of the employer has a disproportionate impact on one sex.... To establish a prima facie case of disparate impact sex discrimination, the plaintiff must show that a facially neutral practice of the employer has a disproportionate impact on one sex.” Joe’s, 969 F.Supp. at 735 (emphasis added).

The central problem in this case, however, is that the district court has identified no facially-neutral employment practice responsible for the gender disparity in Joe’s food server population, and we can find none. The EEOC and the district court have identified, at most, two neutral employment practices on which to ground a disparate impact’ analysis: first, Joe’s word' of mouth recruiting, and second, Joe’s “undirected and undisciplined delegation of hiring authority to subordinate staff,” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 738, resulting in its subjective “roll call” hiring process. Disparate impact analysis fails in this case because neither neutral practice can be causally connected to the gender disparity.

*1279First, there is no evidence that Joe’s word of mouth recruiting method caused any disparity between the percentage of women in the qualified labor pool and the percentage of women actually hired by Joe’s as servers. Notably, this is not a case where Joe’s formal recruiting practices or its informal word-of-mouth recruiting network kept women from learning about available jobs at Joe’s. Compare United States v. Georgia Power Co., 474 F.2d 906, 925 (5th Cir.1973) (finding that word-of-mouth recruiting system can operate as a “‘built-in headwind’” isolating blacks from “web of information” relating to job openings). Rather, the district court specifically found quite the opposite, namely that local female food servers knew about the availability of positions at Joe’s and the logistical details of Joe’s hiring roll calls. Indeed, it observed that although the hiring roll calls were “rarely advertised,” they were “widely known [about] throughout the local food server community.” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 733. No woman testified that, she failed to apply for a position at Joe’s because she was unaware of Joe’s roll call method for filling openings. Plainly, the disparity between the percentage of women in the qualified labor pool and the percentage of women actually hired as servers by Joe’s cannot be causally linked to Joe’s word-of-mouth recruiting process because this practice in no way prevented women from applying to or being hired by Joe’s.

Nor is there any evidence that Joe’s facially-neutral, albeit undisciplined and subjective, hiring practices caused the disparity the district court found between the percentage of women in the qualified labor pool and the percentage of women actually hired as servers by Joe’s. There is no evidence that Joe’s subjective hiring criteria either caused women not to apply to Joe’s or caused those who applied not to be hired. Joe’s hiring roll call decisions were made through a subjective hiring process in which Joe’s hiring maitre d’ relied on short applicant interviews to assess an applicant’s qualification based on a range of subjective factors, including “appearance, attitude, articulation, and experience.” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 733. No witnesses testified and no evidence was presented into the record indicating that any women failed to apply to Joe’s because its hiring criteria included specific judgments about an applicant’s appearance, attitude, articulation, or experience. Nor was any evidence presented showing that women who did apply for server positions at Joe’s were disadvantaged by these specific hiring criteria. Indeed, as we have stated previously, there is in fact no disparity between the percentage of women who actually applied to Joe’s for server positions and the percentage of women hired. Plainly, therefore, the subjective hiring criteria did not harm women once they entered the application process.16

The district court, recognizing that it could not causally connect Joe’s neutral, albeit subjective, recruiting and hiring practices with the disparity between the percentage of women in the qualified labor pool and the percentage of women actually hired as servers by Joe’s, identified Joe’s reputation as a discriminator against women as the causal agent for the disparity. See Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 740. For the district court, Joe’s reputation for not hiring female food servers acted as the essential bridge connecting the neutral practices to the statistical disparity. In other words, according to the district court’s own reasoning, it was not Joe’s neutral recruiting or hiring practices that *1280caused the disparity, but rather Joe’s reputation as a discriminator against women. Because of Joe’s reputation for discriminating, the district court essentially found, women did not apply to Joe’s and therefore were not hired as servers.

We conclude that the district court’s .use of reputation was, on the face of this record, both problematic and inadequate for several independent reasons. First, reputation itself is neither a specific act or a practice. It is far more amorphous. Reputation is “ ‘a prevalent or common belief, a general name, the opinion of a number of persons.’ ” United States v. North Carolina Nat'l Bank, 336 F.2d 248, 253 (4th Cir.1964) (quoting United States v. C.I.T. Corp., 93 F.2d 469, 471 (2nd Cir.1937)). Reputation is the community “picture” of an individual or corporate entity formed over a number of years. See generally Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 477, 69 S.Ct. 213, 93 L.Ed. 168 (1948). Reputation has never been used, as far as we can tell, as a facially-neutral employment act or practice for disparate impact purposes. In the intentional discrimination context, some cases have considered reputation evidence for the limited purpose of defining the parameters of Title VII remedial relief where intentional discrimination either has been conceded or proven and there is evidence that an employer’s discriminatory practices prevented qualified applicants from applying for new jobs. See Morrow v. Crisler, 491 F.2d 1053, 1055-57 (5th Cir.1974) (en banc) (instructing district court on remand to consider the role of Mississippi Highway Patrol Department’s entrenched reputation for race discrimination—a reputation based on their historical practice of intentional race discrimination—in discouraging black applicants when shaping remedial recruiting policies for the Department); see also EEOC v. Rath Packing Co., 787 F.2d 318, 337 (8th Cir.1986) (explaining that reputation evidence could be considered in determining the relevant labor market for the computation of a Title VII class backpay award given the employer’s well-known historical practice of intentional sex discrimination) (citing Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 365, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1977)). We have been pointed to no case, however, and can find none that has treated an employer’s reputation as a discriminator as- itself an act or practice for the purposes of establishing a prima facie case under a theory of disparate impact. Indeed, no case has ever used reputation as a bridge connecting a neutral hiring practice to a statistical disparity in order to establish disparate impact liability where the neutral employment practices alone did not cause the disparity.

In addition, even if reputation could somehow be used in theory as a causal bridge, in this case there is no logical or factual connection between any facially-neutral component of Joe’s employment practices and Joe’s reputation as a discriminator. Nothing in this record indicates that Joe’s recruitment by “word-of-mouth” rather than through other recruiting mechanisms such as print or television advertising contributed in any way to Joe’s reputation for discrimination. Nor is there any evidence that the use of appearance, articulation, attitude, and experience as hiring criteria contributed to Joe’s reputation for discrimination. Indeed, there is no suggestion from either party that these hiring criteria are themselves somehow illegitimate or discriminatory.17 Instead, the suggestion from the EEOC is that these criteria are simply a cover or a smokescreen and do not reflect the real bases for Joe’s hiring decisions. Rather than hiring on the bases of appearance,' articulation, attitude and experience, the EEOC contends, Joe’s really hired servers on the -basis of sex and it is this *1281discriminatory hiring, rather than the use of subjective hiring criteria, that arguably led to Joe’s reputation as a discriminator. See Appellee Brief at 30-31. But, where Joe’s neutral hiring and recruiting practices did not cause its reputation, we think it is wholly inappropriate to use reputation as the causal bridge connecting neutral practices to a statistical disparity for the purposes of establishing Joe’s disparate impact liability. See Lewis v. Tobacco Workers’ Int’l Union, 577 F.2d 1135, 1143 (4th Cir.1978) (holding that an employer cannot be found liable under Title VII simply because potential minority applicants subjectively believe the company will not hire them because of their race where this belief is not attributable, to the employer’s conduct); EEOC v. Sheet Metal Workers, Int’l Assoc., 463 F.Supp. 388, 425 (D.Md.1978) (finding that an employer “must itself do something to violate Title VII; it does not violate Title VII because someone else thinks it has violated Title VII”).

Finally, we observe that the district court expressly admitted evidence of Joe’s reputation as a discriminator not for the truth of the matter asserted but only to show the state of mind of the women who failed to apply for server positions at Joe’s. According to the district court, Joe’s reputation was not entered into evidence “as proof of conduct consistent with the reputation, as proof of Joe’s hiring practices themselves, or as proof of bad character or intent to discriminate” but “was admitted solely to establish the existence of the reputation.” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 736. The district court thereby expressly refused to find any direfet causal connection between any of Joe’s neutral employment practices and its reputation as a discriminator.

While a company may be held liable for a discriminatory reputation if there is evidence it caused or perpetuated that reputation through some intentional affirmative act, see Morrow, 491 F.2d at 1055-57; Rath Packing, 787 F.2d at 337, we know of no federal circuit that has found an employer liable under Title VII on the basis of a reputation for discrimination it did not cause. See Lewis, 577 F.2d at 1143. Nor are we prepared to impose on an employer an affirmative duty under Title VII to ameliorate a public reputation not attributable to its own employment conduct. See id. (observing that “[w]e do not think a failure of the company to announce innocence is a violation of Title VII”); see also Sheet Metal Workers, Int’l Assoc., 463 F.Supp. at 425. In fact, we are unaware of any case that requires a Title VII employer to affirmatively dispel a negative public image not of its own making or else be subject to a finding of Title VII discrimination.

That said, the record extant and some of the district court’s findings of fact can be read to support the alternate conclusion that Joe’s -management intentionally excluded women from food serving positions in order to provide its customers with an “Old World,” fine-dining ambience. Thus, for example, the district court found that “Joe’s management acquiesced in and gave silent- approbation to the notion that male food servers were preferable to female food servers.” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 731. At another point in its findings, the district court observed that “Joe’s sought to emulate Old World traditions by creating an ambience in which tuxedo-clad men served its distinctive menu.” Id. at 732-33. Moreover, the district court apparently;-also credited the testimony of one of Joe’s 'former hiring maitre d’, Roy Garrett, who' explained that Joe’s was “a male server type of job” by tradition. Id. at 732. As a result, the district court said that “women have systematically been excluded from the most lucrative entry level position, that of server.” Id. at 740. Finally, the district court found that this historical practice of hiring only men was responsible for Joe’s “male-only” reputation. The district court held that “Joe’s reputation in the community, which reflected the restaurant’s historical hiring practice, led potential female applicants not to apply for server posi*1282tions. Joe’s reputation, therefore, was largely responsible for the gender skew in the pool of applicants at the annual roll call.” Id. at 736.

But, these factual findings do not mesh easily with a disparate impact theory because they suggest that Joe’s hiring system was not in practice facially-neutral, but rather was facially-discriminatory on the basis of gender. They suggest the conclusion that in fact Joe’s had a desired preference for male servers and that this preference influenced the hiring decisions of Joe’s decisionmakers, resulting in the deliberate and systematic exclusion of women as food servers. If this were true, Joe’s could be found liable for intentional discrimination in violation of Title VII. We emphasize that this is not a case like Griggs, where there was a pronounced history of intentional discrimination followed by a facially-neutral employment practice which perpetuates the effects of an employer’s previous discrimination. See also Rowe v. General Motors Corp., 457 F.2d 348, 356 (5th Cir.1972) (holding that GM’s promotion/transfer standards “freeze” into effect the racial disparity in salaried jobs created by the company’s prior policy of explicit discrimination); Senter v. General Motors Corp., 532 F.2d 511, 526, 530 (6th Cir.1976) (affirming the district court’s finding that the employer’s subjective promotions procedures had the effect of “locking” minorities into the hourly ranks and out of the supervisory ranks). The district court’s findings and the record evidence indicate that Joe’s hiring methodology and practices have remained relatively constant throughout the relevant time periods. Therefore, if Joe’s was guilty of intentionally discriminating against women in hiring servers, it would be liable for intentional discrimination throughout the entire pre-charge period since there is absolutely no evidence that Joe’s adopted new facially-neutral hiring requirements until, at best, the post-charge period when it implemented an objective tray test and started to use a three-person interview panel.

Having said all this, we reiterate that nothing in this record supports a disparate impact theory of liability. Rather, much of the district court’s findings (as well as the credited record evidence), may be read to support the conclusion that Joe’s employment practices in hiring servers were really permeated with an unlawful intention to discriminate. None of the district court’s findings support the conclusion that a facially-neutral practice or policy of Joe’s caused its reputation, and there is not a scintilla of evidence in the record to support this notion. In short, under the district court’s findings, it is not the formal mechanics of Joe’s roll-call system or the criteria embedded in its subjective hiring practices, nor its formal delegation of hiring authority to its maitre d’s which kept women from applying to and being hired by Joe’s during the pre- and post-charge periods.

At bottom then, this case really centers around the theory that women refrained from making the “futile gesture,” Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 365-366, 97 S.Ct. 1843, of applying to Joe’s when they knew that Joe’s only hired men as food servers. If Joe’s reputation came from anything causally attributable to the restaurant, it emanated from Joe’s own purportedly discriminatory hiring practices, not from the specific facially neutral practices identified by the district court. While we agree that in some situations evidence of prior historical discrimination may provide relevant background to a contemporary disparate impact challenge,18 the facts of this *1283case may be read to suggest something quite different; he. that Joe’s hiring decisionmakers systematically excluded female applicants from consideration, that over time this male-only preference became common knowledge, and that eventually most potential, qualified, female applicants self-selected out of Joe’s hiring process precisely because of its reputation for intentional sex discrimination. Indeed, the subsidiary factual findings in this case could be read in simple syllogistic form: first, “Old World” fine-dining meant hiring only tuxedo-clad male servers; second, Joe’s sought to emulate “Old World” fine-dining; and finally, Joe’s therefore only hired male servers. If this is what the district court meant to find, it is indicative of something quite different from the theory of disparate impact. But we cannot affirm a disparate impact judgment where the case centers entirely around allegations and evidence of intentional discrimination. The record does not support it, and to do so would unwisely conflate the distinct theories of disparate impact and disparate treatment.

B. Remand

We are left then with two unattractive choices on appeal: first, we can affirm the liability judgment on an alternate theory of Title VII liability such as disparate treatment or pattern or practice discrimination, as the EEOC suggests, or we can remand so that the district court may reconsider its factual findings and conclusions of law. Although the district court’s findings may be read to suggest a pattern or practice on the part of Joe’s to intentionally discriminate on the basis of sex in its hiring of food servers, we are not prepared to draw this conclusion in the face of the district court’s having expressly rejected this theory; rather we think a remand to the district court is the wiser choice.

We reach this conclusion for three principal reasons. First, we are deeply troubled by and unable to easily square the fundamental inconsistency between the district court’s express rejection of the EEOC’s intentional discrimination claim and several of its subsidiary-factual findings that Joe’s hired male servers only in order to create an “Old World” fine dining ambience. At trial, the EEOC primarily argued an intentional discrimination theory of liability. However, as noted, the district court summarily rejected this theory without - analysis. It- unambiguously stated in the opening paragraph of its partial final judgment order that “[b]ased on an evaluation of the evidence, the court finds that the EEOC has not proved-intentional discrimination.” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 730. Later, in its conclusion of law section, the district court reiterated this conclusion observing that “[t]he court finds that the EEOC has not met its burden of proof under disparate treatment analysis.” Id. at 735.

Second, after carefully reading the trial transcript, we believe the district court’s conclusion that the EEOC has not met its burden of proving intentional discrimination may have been based on an erroneous view of Title VII case law. When “ ‘a district court has failed to make a finding because of an erroneous view of the law, the usual rule is that there should be a remand for further proceedings to permit the trial court to make the necessary findings.’ ” Perryman v. Johnson Products Co., Inc., 698 F.2d 1138, 1144 n. 11 (11th Cir.1983) (quoting Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 291, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982)). In light of the district court’s seemingly unambiguous findings that “Joe’s has been a ‘male server type’ establishment for the better part of the century” and that “women have systematically been excluded from the most lucrative entry level position, that of server,” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 740, we,emphasize that a finding of disparate treatment requires no more than a finding that women were intentionally treated differently by Joe’s because of or on account of their gender. To prove the discriminatory intent necessary for a disparate .treatment .or pattern or practice claim, a plaintiff need not prove that a *1284defendant harbored some special “animus” or “malice” towards the protected group to which she belongs.19 In the race discrimination context, we recently have explained that “ill will, enmity, or hostility are not prerequisites of intentional discrimination.” Ferrill v. Parker Group, Inc., 168 F.3d 468, 473 n. 7 (11th Cir.1999). In Ferrill, for example, we held a defendant, who acted without racial animus but consciously and intentionally made job assignments based on racial stereotypes, liable for intentional discrimination. See id. The Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion in Goodman v. Lukens Steel Co., 482 U.S. 656, 107 S.Ct. 2617, 96 L.Ed.2d 572 (1987). In Goodman, union members sued their union under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 for intentionally failing to assert race discrimination claims against their employer. In its analysis, the Supreme Court explained that though “there was no suggestion [ ] that the [defendant] held any racial animus against or denigrated blacks generally,” id. at 668, 107 S.Ct. at 2625, the union still could be held liable for racial discrimination “ ‘regardless of whether, as a subjective matter, its leaders were favorably disposed toward minorities.’ ” Goodman, 482 U.S. at 669, 107 S.Ct. at 2625 (citing Goodman v. Lukens Steel Co., 580 F.Supp. 1114, 1160 (E.D.Pa.1984)). Based on this reasoning, we stated in Ferrill, “[t]he Goodman Court clearly held that liability for intentional discrimination under § 1981 requires only that decisions be premised on race, not that decisions be motivated by invidious hostility or animus.” Id., 168 F.3d at 473. While Goodman and Ferrill both involved § 1981 claims, there is no difference in the substantive doctrine of intentional discrimination under Title VII and § 1981.

Simply put, Title VII prohibits “the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes,” Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power v. Manhart, 435 U.S. 702, 708 n. 13, 98 S.Ct. 1370, 55 L.Ed.2d 657 (1978) (quoting Sprogis v. United Air Lines Inc., 444 F.2d 1194, 1198 (7th Cir.1971)), even where the stereotypes are benign or not grounded in group animus. Therefore, if Joe’s deliberately and systematically excluded women from food server positions based on a sexual stereotype which simply associated “fine-dining ambience” with all-male food service, it then could be found liable under Title VII for intentional discrimination regardless of whether it also was motivated by ill-will or malice toward women.20

*1285Moreover, in light of the district court’s findings that “Joe’s management acquiesced in and gave silent approbation to the notion that male food servers were preferable to female food servers,” Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 731, and that “what prevailed at Joe’s, albeit not mandated by written policy or verbal direction, was the ethos that female food servers were not to be hired,” Id. at 732, we also emphasize that under our controlling case law, either under a disparate treatment or a pattern or practice theory, Plaintiff need not show that hiring decisions were made pursuant to an express policy or directive from Joe’s owners. It is enough to show in a disparate treatment case that a particular employment decision was made because of sex and in a pattern or practice case that employment decisions were generally made deliberately because of sex, regardless of whether in either context a formal or express policy of discrimination existed from the employer. See Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 336, 97 S.Ct. 1843; Harris v. Shelby County Bd. of Educ., 99 F.3d 1078, 1083 (11th Cir.1996).

The third reason favoring remand is that almost all of the evidence of intentional discrimination came in the form of conflicting witness testimony- subject to lengthy cross-examination. It is clear from the trial record, for example, that several plaintiff witnesses provided testimony, which if credited by the trial court, could support a finding of intentional discrimination. Several witnesses testified that Joe’s management actively discouraged women from applying. Specifically, a former telephone clerk at Joe’s, Cathy Evans, testified that she was told by General Manager Robert Moorehead, among others, to inform women who called about server positions that the restaurant did not hire female servers. In addition, former take-out cook Cassandra Williams testified that she was told by management that the restaurant only hired women to work in the take-out section, that she was told by a waiter that Joe’s did not hire female servers, and that she overheard Roy Garret state that no women were hired to work in the, main dining room. Finally, Barbara Mommsen testified that when she applied for a server position in 1987, she was told by owner Joanne Bass that Joe’s did not hire female servers. It is, equally clear from the trial record that Joe’s owners and- key management personnel, including Joanne Bass and Robert Moorehead, vigorously denied these specific allegations at trial. The district court made no specific findings on the credibility of these witnesses, and did not spécifically resolve these credibility conflicts. We are riot in a position on appellate review to sort through this conflicting witness testimony in regard to Plaintiffs intentional discrimination claims. Under our caselaw, we allot substantial deference to the fact-finder, in this case, the district court, in reaching credibility determinations with respect to witness testimony. See Stano, 51 F.3d at 944 (holding that we defer even *1286beyond clear error review to trial court findings relating to witness credibility determinations).

Since the state of this record is replete with conflicting witness testimony and conflicting conclusions drawn by the district court, the wisest approach, we think, is to remand the case to the factfinder for more detailed findings on the EEOC’s intentional discrimination claims. Only in this way, can we be assured of reaching an outcome truly consonant with the factfinder’s view of the evidence. We therefore abide by the general rule of law that “ ‘a remand is the proper course unless the record permits only one resolution of the factual issue.’ ” Cooper-Houston v. Southern Ry. Co., 37 F.3d 603, 604 (11th Cir.1994) (quoting Kelley v. Southern Pacific Co., 419 U.S. 318, 331-32, 95 S.Ct. 472, 42 L.Ed.2d 498 (1974)); see also DeMarco v. United States, 415 U.S. 449, 450, 94 S.Ct. 1185, 39 L.Ed.2d 501 (1974) (stating that “factfinding is the basic responsibility of district courts, rather than appellate courts”).

Finally, before we remand, we take a moment to explicate in more detail settled law concerning the requirements of Title VII liability based on a finding of intentional discrimination. There are two theories of intentional discrimination under Title VII: disparate treatment and pattern or practice discrimination. Disparate treatment claims require proof of discriminatory intent either through direct or circumstantial evidence. See Harris, 99 F.3d at 1083 (observing that a “ ‘plaintiff must, by either direct or circumstantial evidence, demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that the employer had a discriminatory intent’ ” to prove a disparate treatment claim) (quoting Batey v. Stone, 24 F.3d 1330, 1334 (11th Cir.1994)). “Direct evidence is evidence that establishes the existence of discriminatory intent behind the employment decision without any inference or presumption.” Standard v. A.B.E.L. Servs., Inc., 161 F.3d 1318, 1330 (11th Cir.1998) (citing Carter v. City of Miami, 870 F.2d 578, 580-81 (11th Cir.1989)). Absent direct evidence, a plaintiff may prove intentional discrimination through the familiar McDonnell Douglas paradigm for circumstantial evidence claims. To establish a prima facie ease of disparate treatment under this rubric, a plaintiff “must show: (1) she is a member of a protected class; (2) she was subjected to adverse employment action; (3) her employer treated similarly situated male employees more favorably; and (4) she was qualified to do the job.” Maniccia v. Brown, 171 F.3d 1364, 1368 (11th Cir.1999). Once these elements are established, a defendant has the burden of producing “legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for its employment action.” Holifield v. Reno, 115 F.3d 1555, 1564 (11th Cir.1997) (citing Texas Dep’t of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981)). If such a reason is produced, a plaintiff then has the ultimate burden of proving the reason to be a pretext for unlawful discrimination. See Holifield, 115 F.3d at 1565.21

In contrast, a pattern and practice claim either may be brought by the EEOC if there is “reasonable cause to believe that any person or group of persons is engaged in a pattern or practice” of discrimination, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-6(a) (1994); see also In re Employment, 198 F.3d at 1310 n. 8, or by a class of private plaintiffs under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et. seq., see Cox v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., 784 F.2d 1546, 1549 (11th Cir.1986). In such suits, the plaintiffs must establish “ ‘that [sex] discrimination was the company’s standard operating procedure.’ ” Cox, 784 F.2d at 1559 (quoting Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 336, 97 S.Ct. 1843); see also Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U.S. 747, 772, 96 S.Ct. 1251, 47 L.Ed.2d 444 (1976). To meet this burden of proof, a plaintiff must “prove more than *1287the mere occurrence of isolated or accidental or sporadic discriminatory' acts. It ha[s] to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that [ ] discrimination [is] the company’s standard operating procedure— the regular rather than unusual practice.” Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 336, 97 S.Ct. 1843 (footnote and internal quotation marks omitted). While “pattern or practice cases are a variant of the disparate treatment theory and thus ‘[p]roof of discriminatory motive is critical,’ ” statistical evidence often is used to establish the existence of a pattern or practice. Lujan v. Franklin County Bd. of Educ., 766 F.2d 917, 929 (6th Cir.1985) (quoting Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 335 n. 15, 97 S.Ct. 1843). A plaintiff may establish a pattern or practice claim “through a combination of strong statistical evidence of. disparate impact coupled with anecdotal evidence of the employer’s intent to treat the protected class unequally.” Mozee v. American Commercial Marine Service Co., 940 F.2d 1036, 1051 (7th Cir.1991) We also point out that “direct evidence of an intent to discriminate” may be used to establish a pattern or practice claim. Lujan, 766 F.2d at 929 n. 15. Finally, we observe that in determining pattern or practice liability, the government is not required to prove that any particular employee was a victim of the pattern or practice; it need only establish a prima facie case that such a policy existed.22

Having offered these observations about Title VII law, we remand to the sound discretion of the district court, which has labored so long and diligently, so that it, may make such factual findings and draw-such conclusions of law about the .EEOC’s intentional discrimination claims as it may deem appropriate. We have struggled mightily to avoid a remand. We know full well that much time and expense already has been spent on this case both before the district court and on appeal. However, in the end, we believe that the most just result is to remand to the district court for reconsideration in light of this opinion. In this way, the district court, which has heard all of the witness testimony firsthand, may conduct the relevant factfinding requisite for determining liability on the EEOC’s intentional discrimination claims.23

Ill;

Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s judgment of liability as to the EEOC’s disparate impact claims, and we remand to the district court so that it may reconsider its factual findings and conclusions of law on the EEOC’s intentional discrimination claims in light of this opinion. Because of our holding, we have.no occasion to reach the various issues raised on appeal regarding the propriety, of the-remedies awarded by the district court.

VACATED AND REMANDED.

HULL, Circuit Judge,

specially concurring in part and dissenting in part:

After a lengthy bench trial] the' district court, as the fact-finder, entered compre*1288hensive findings of fact and conclusions of law. EEOC v. Joe’s Stone Crab, Inc., 969 F.Supp. 727, 730-85 (S.D.Fla.1997). The trial evidence amply supports all of the district court’s factual findings, and the majority does not contend otherwise. Thus, I concur in the majority opinion to this extent.

I also agree with the majority that disparate impact liability requires a showing that facially-neutral employment practices caused the lack of female food servers at Joe’s. I disagree, however, with the majority’s conclusion that the district court “identified no facially-neutral practice responsible for the gender disparity in Joe’s food server population and we can find none.” I disagree because the district court (1) did single out certain employment practices that are facially-neutral and (2) did not err in finding that these practices caused the gender disparity in Joe’s food servers. In my view, the district court’s finding of disparate impact liability should be affirmed in full.

Alternatively, even if, as the majority concludes, the district court’s subsidiary factual findings suggest that facially-discriminatory practices at Joe’s actually caused the gender disparity and thus its findings support only disparate treatment liability, we should affirm on that alternate ground. A remand for more work by this trial court is unnecessary. To demonstrate why the liability phase of this protracted case should end here, I discuss first why the district court did not err in finding disparate impact liability, and then why the district court’s subsidiary findings are amply sufficient for us to affirm the district court’s liability decision on the alternate ground of disparate treatment.

I. DISPARATE IMPACT LIABILITY

It is undisputed that from 1950 to 1986, Joe’s hired all male food servers with one exception. The district court identified facially-neutral employment practices by Joe’s that caused this historical gender disparity in its food servers to continue in the pre-charge period — from 1986 to 1990 — and the post-charge period — from 1991 to 1995. The district court even began its conclusions of law by acknowledging that “[t]o establish a prima facie case of disparate impact sex discrimination, the plaintiff must show that a facially neutral practice of the employer has a disproportionate impact on one sex.” Id. at 735 (emphasis added).1 The district court then correctly stated that, to prove a disparate impact claim, the EEOC: (1) must show a legally significant statistical “disparity between the proportion of women in the available labor pool and the proportion of women hired”; (2) must “identify the specific employment practice alleged to cause such disparity”; and (3) must “show the causal nexus between that employment practice and the disparity.” Id.2

The district court also correctly applied these legal principles to its factual find*1289ings. The majority opinion' only assumes that the district court properly found that the EEOC demonstrated that the required gender disparity between the available labor pool and Joe’s actual hires. In my view, however, the EEOC clearly proved that the available qualified labor pool of food servers was 31.9% female.3 Id. at 737. Thus, the proven statistical disparity — between 31.9% and 0% in the pre-charge period and 31.9% and 21.7% in the post-charge period — is legally significant.4

Because the ' evidence overwhelmingly showed a legally significant gender disparity in Joe’s food servers, the majority opinion necessarily focuses on the second and third prongs of a prima facie disparate impact case — whether the EEOC and the district court identified facially-neutml employment practices as causing this gender disparity. The majority concludes they did not. I conclude they did.

The main facially-neutral employment practice identified by the district court was management’s lack of any hiring guidelines and policies and the resultant “undirected and undisciplined delegation of hiring authority to subordinate staff.”5 Id. at *1290738. Within the ambit of “undirected and undisciplined delegation of hiring authority to subordinate staff,” the district court included these facially-neutral practices: (I) management’s lack of any written or even oral guidelines for its staff to follow in hiring; (2) the staffs use of mainly a subjective interview process and “subjective intuition” for hiring its servers; (8) management’s sitting in on the roll call process but providing no input; and (4) lack of any managerial oversight and lack of any standardization, as exemplified by management’s failure to raise a question when the subordinate staff filled 108 consecutive vacancies with only male servers. Id. at 738-39. The majority states that “the subjective hiring criteria did not harm women once they entered the application process.” I disagree because the record evidence supports the district court’s findings that it did. Many qualified women attended Joe’s roll calls and were interviewed, but were not hired.6

The district court emphasized that the subjective criteria that Joe’s hiring staff used, and the majority focuses on — appearance, attitude, articulation, and experience — were not defined in any way or standardized between interviewers. Id. at 738. For example, the district court found that the criteria of experience was not defined by management and varied among staff interviewers based upon their subjective beliefs about what constituted experience. The district court also found that some of Joe’s hiring staff believed that prior single service experience — as opposed to team service experience — is required; others did not. As a result, the district court found that some female candidates with decades of experience were rejected by Joe’s staff, while other males without any experience were hired. Id. at 739.7 Likewise, the district court found that Joe’s hiring staff differed as to what restaurants are “similar” to Joe’s for purposes of experience. Id.

The district court also observed that after the EEOC’s charge, Joe’s management directed the daytime maitre d’ to interview with another maitre d’ and subsequently used a panel of three interviewers, later changed to include a woman. The district court found, however, that “[wjhile management’s introduction of a *1291panel system for interviewing may dilute the subjective views' of any one evaluator, it does not overcome management’s failure to develop uniform, gender-neutral guidelines to ensure that all interviewers interpret criteria in the same manner and apply them consistently.” Id. The district court summarized Joe’s hiring decisions as being left to each interviewer’s “own subjective intuition” and the interviewers’ judgment being “informed largely by their own experience in. the restaurant’s atmosphere of all-male service.” Id. at 738.

Another major employment practice at Joe’s, which the district court identified as causing the gender disparity, was Joe’s use of only a “word-of-mouth” roll call system for recruiting new servers. The district court pointed out that year after year only a few women came to the roll call due to Joe’s well-known historical practice of hiring, and using, only tuxedo-clad men as servers. The district court emphasized that Joe’s did not advertise in the newspaper or elsewhere that it was an equal opportunity employer or that Joe’s hired both men and women as servers. Instead, Joe’s continued recruiting through only the “word-of-mouth” roll call on the first Tuesday in October — just as it had done for decades.

The majority stresses that the particular date of the roll call was widely known in the Miami Beach community, and that no woman testified that she failed to apply because she was unaware of the roll call. However, the district court found that Joe’s historical practice of hiring only men as servers was also well known in that community and caused women servers to self-select out and not come to Joe’s roll call. Joe’s own conduct caused the dearth of women applicants. The district court, in effect, found women refrained from making the futile gesture of attending the roll call when they knew Joe’s hired only men as servers.

Although the undisciplined delegation of hiring, subjective interview process, and-the use of a roll call are facially-neutral employment practices, the district court also referenced “Joe’s history of being an all-male server establishment.” Id. at 739. Excluding women as servers — -even if to create a fine dining ambience of tuxedo-clad men — is ’ a facially-discriminatory practice, as the majority note's. However, Joe’s past discriminatory hiring is part of the factual background against which the district court analyzed whether 'the -above facially-neutral practices caused the gender disparity to continue. -The district court’s order raised the precise question of whether “Joe’s undirected and undisciplined delegation of hiring authority cause[d] the disparity between the number of women hired as servers' and the number of women available, or are forces outside the hiring process — such as -a deteriorating neighborhood, low turnover, or the heavy lifting required of servers — to blame?” Id. 8

In short, the district court considered the above facially-neutral employment practices, not in a vacuum, but in the context of Joe’s historical discriminatory practice of excluding women as food servers. The district court properly considered Joe’s historical discriminatory practices, and the “males-only” reputation Joe’s created for itself, as relevant background evidence in examining whether Joe’s facially-neutral employment practices caused and continued the gender disparity in Joe’s food servers. In doing so, the district court did not err because it is well *1292settled that past discrimination is admissible to demonstrate that facially-neutral employment practices continue to perpetuate the effects of past discrimination.9

Against this historical backdrop, then, the district court found that management’s continued unguided and undisciplined delegation of hiring authority, without any written or verbal policies or guidelines, allowed Joe’s subordinate staff (a) to recruit servers by using only its “word-of-mouth” roll call system even though that system had proved to recruit mostly male applicants, and (b) to continue to hire only males as food servers based on their “gut feelings” regardless of the qualified women who did apply. In this manner, the facially-neutral practices caused the gender disparity. The district court further described how Joe’s delegation of hiring authority to staff without any guidelines, and the use of solely the “word-of-mouth” roll call, actually caused the statistical disparity, as follows:

When subordinate staff filled 108 sequential vacancies with male servers, management never raised a question nor voiced an objection. This silence signified approbation. Jo Ann Bass confirmed the absolute nature of this delegation when she testified: “I have nothing to do with hiring or firing. I give an overall view as to something that I see as glaring.” Although she always sits in on the annual roll call, Mrs. Bass has never instructed the hiring staff how to select servers and does not set out guiding principles., Thus, the subordinates are left to make decisions according to their own subjective intuition. Moreover, their judgment of what is appropriate is informed largely by their own experience in the restaurant’s atmosphere of all-male service.

Id. at 738.

Additionally, the district court correctly found that Joe’s facially-neutral recruiting and hiring practices did not address the entrenched “male-only” hiring and “male-only” reputation Joe’s created for itself and thereby further caused the gender disparity to continue. The district court found that, at a minimum, Joe’s needed to advertise that it now hired both men and women as servers. Instead, Joe’s continued reliance on the facially-neutral, “word-of-mouth” roll call caused the gender disparity in its applicant pool and, in turn, its hires, to continue. Furthermore, as to the women who did apply, the district court found that “without additional guidance and structuring by management, there is no assurance that female applicants who [do] attend roll call will be treated evenhandedly.” Id. at 740.

The district court’s findings are akin to those in Griggs and other cases in which neutral employment practices have been found to perpetuate historical discrimination. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 430, 91 S.Ct. 849, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971) (making clear that Title VII prohibited an employer from using neutral hiring and promotion practices to “freeze” in place a status quo achieved through prior decades of intentional discrimination); Senter v. General Motors Corp., 532 F.2d 511 (6th Cir.1976); Rowe v. General Motors Corp., 457 F.2d 348 (5th Cir.1972).10 *1293In situations where a protected group has been historically and systematically frozen out of certain employment positions, a purely subjective recruiting and hiring system can act to perpetuate that problem.

As in Rowe, Joe’s had a historical practice of excluding a protected group. Nor was any direction given to Joe’s hiring staff or potential applicants that an effort was being made to change its longstanding historical practice of excluding women as food servers. Indeed, just the opposite occurred. Joe’s hired 108 male servers between 1986 and 1990 but no women, without management voicing an objection to its staff. Further, the hiring staff continued to use only the “word-of-mouth” roll call for recruiting without objection, and was given little to no guidance in terms of how to assess even those female applicants who did apply. As a result, Joe’s staff admittedly relied upon vague “gut feelings.” The staff themselves testified that they viewed Joe’s as a place for male servers.11 Without guidance from their superiors, this stereotype undoubtedly guided their “gut” feelings as to whom to hire. .

Because Joe’s delegated authority over both recruiting and hiring to staff who admittedly felt that the restaurant was a male-server type of establishment and had historically known it to be so, Joe’s staff was content to hire only men and to use a “word-of-mouth” roll call system which recruited mostly men. Further, the interviewers’ admitted bias for male servers went unchecked by guidance from management.12 Given the historical context, the district court did not err in finding that management’s continued lack of any guidance to its hiring staff, the staffs continued use of only the “word-of-mouth” roll call, and the use of a subjective interview process caused the gender disparity to continue in both the attendance at the roll call, from which Joe’s hired exclusively, and in the actual hires.

Thus, I conclude that the district court’s findings — that Joe’s specific facially-neutral recruiting and hiring practices caused the gender disparity in its serving staff— are not clearly erroneous.13

*1294II. DISPARATE TREATMENT

Alternatively, even if, as the majority concludes, the district court’s subsidiary factual findings that Joe’s systematically excluded women as food servers show that disparate treatment analysis is more appropriate in this case than disparate impact analysis, I would affirm the district court’s liability finding on that basis.

The majority concedes that “some of the district court’s findings of fact can be read to support the alternate conclusion that Joe’s management intentionally excluded women from food-serving positions in order to provide its customers with an ‘Old World,’ fine-dining ambience.” I would go further and hold that the district court’s factual findings actually do support disparate treatment liability. Specifically, the district court found that Joe’s was “traditionally a male place” and was “always a tradition ... that it was a male server type of job,” quoting Maitre d’ Garret’s testimony to this effect:

As I said before, we had very few female applicants over the years. It was sort of a tradition.... It was always tradition from the time I arrived there that it was a male server type of job. And until just recently when we became aware that we had to do other things, ... originally it was traditionally a male place. We always had women that were qualified women .... Traditionally, I mean, it’s just some restaurants, when you walk in, you know there are going to be women waitresses, other restaurants you know it is going to be male waiters.

Joe’s Stone Crab, 969 F.Supp. at 732 (alteration by district court) (emphasis added).14 The district court also found that Joe’s excluded women as servers because “Joe’s sought to emulate Old World traditions by creating an ambience in which tuxedo-clad men served its distinctive menu.” Id. at 733.15

At another point, the district court found that “Joe’s management acquiesced in and gave silent approbation to the notion that male food servers were preferable to female food servers.” Id. at 731. The district court further found that “what pre*1295vailed at Joe’s, albeit not mandated by written policy or verbal direction, was the ethos that female food servers were not to be hired.” Id. at 732. Later in its factual findings, the district court twice repeated its description of Joe’s hiring as “Joe’s historical practice of not hiring [women].” Id. at 733, 734. In its conclusions of law, the court similarly repeated its factual finding that historically Joe’s was a male-server establishment and systematically excluded women from the server position, as follows:

As the court detailed in its findings of fact, Joe’s has been a “male server type" establishment for the better part of this century. While women have predominated among Joe’s owner/managers, as well as among the laundry, cashiering, and take away staff, women have systematically been excluded from the most lucrative entry level position, that of server.

Id. at 740 (emphasis added).

At trial, Joe’s asserted that it had no women servers because it “hired from an open applicant pool and women simply did not apply.” Id. at 733. The district court expressly rejected Joe’s contention. Instead, the district court found that Joe’s hired only males as servers for half a century because it wanted to emulate the “Old World” tradition of male servers to create an ambience of “fine dining.” The court also specifically found that Joe’s all-male serving staff and its historical hiring practices caused its “male-only” reputation, stating:

[T]he court finds that Joe’s historical practice of not hiring women as food servers resulted in the commensurate reputation. This reputation caused many eligible female food servers not to attend the annual roll call, considering it a waste of time. This is a significant finding, for Joe’s argued at trial that it did not discriminate against women because it hired from an open applicant pool'and women simply did not apply. The EEOC agreed that women rarely attended roll calls, but contended this was due to Joe’s historical practice and resulting reputation for not hiring female food servers. The court concludes that the EEOC’s analysis is correct.16

Id. at 733.

In summary, the district court expressly found that Joe’s systematically excluded women as food servers, and that Joe’s longstanding practice of excluding women as servers created its well-known “male-only” reputation. Thus, Joe’s “male-only” hiring practices and “male-only” reputation caused the dearth' of female applicants at its roll call and the lack of female food servers;- As the majority opinion acknowledges, “much of the district court’s findings (as well as the credited record evidence), may be read to support the conclusion that Joe’s employment practices in hiring servers were really permeated with an unlawful intention to discriminate.”

Thus, as the majority opinion appears to concede, the district court’s subsidiary factual findings are sufficient to support disparate treatment liability. As the majority states, “a finding of disparate treatment requires no more than a finding that women were intentionally treated differently by Joe’s because of or on account of their gender.” Furthermore, as the majority states, “[t]o prove the discriminatory intent necessary for a disparate treatment ... claim, a plaintiff need not prove that a defendant harbored some special ‘animus’ or ‘malice’ towards the protected group to which she belongs.” Rather, as the majority observes, “[i]f Joe’s deliberately and systematically excluded women from food server positions based on a sexual stereotype which simply associated ‘fine-dining *1296ambience’ with all-male food service, it then could be found liable under Title VII for intentional discrimination regardless of whether it also was motivated by ill-will or malice toward women.”

The majority does not go a step further and affirm on the alternate ground of disparate treatment, however, because it is troubled by “an inconsistency” in the district court’s order. As the majority opinion points out, the district court never discusses or analyzes the EEOC’s disparate treatment claim, but instead gives only • the summary legal conclusion that “the EEOC has not proved intentional discrimination” and “has not met its burden of proof under disparate treatment analysis.” Id. at 730, 735. Despite the lack of analysis or discussion, the majority opinion finds that this two-sentence summary legal conclusion creates a “fundamental inconsistency” with the district court’s factual findings, making remand the “wiser choice.”

I would agree were it not for the fact that the district court made such extensive and clear factual findings about Joe’s discriminatory hiring practices. The record evidence overwhelmingly supports those factual findings, and those factual findings clearly support disparate treatment liability. More importantly, any inconsistency created by this two-sentence legal conclusion is easily reconciled from the face of the district court’s order itself. A close analysis of the order reveals that the district court was under the mistaken view that the intentional discrimination necessary for disparate treatment required either (1) an express policy or directive from Joe’s owners to exclude women or (2) some animus, ill-will, or malice toward women.

The district court viewed Joe’s discriminatory practice as one adopted by Joe’s as the by-product of its “fine dining” tradition and therefore not a direct intentional act of discrimination against women. Specifically, in the district court’s view, the hiring of men was due to a desire to emulate a “fine dining” tradition, as opposed to an animus toward, or a written policy excluding, women. As a result, the district court viewed Joe’s practices as causing a disparate impact on women rather than intentional discrimination against women. Id. at 731.

But as the majority aptly states, if Joe’s “excluded women from food server positions based on a sexual stereotype which simply associated ‘fine dining’ ambience with only all-male food service, it then could be found liable under Title VII for intentional discrimination regardless of whether it had such a written policy or was motivated by ill-will or malice.” Since the district court so clearly made repeated findings that this is precisely what occurred at Joe’s, I would affirm on the alternative ground of disparate treatment thus pretermitting any need for remand. As the majority points out, this district court “has labored ... long and diligently” and this “remand in no way obligates the district court to hear additional evidence or argument in the case.” Because the majority “remandfs] to the sound discretion of the district court,” that court may consider whether to simply strike the two sentences the majority finds create a “fundamental inconsistency” and to then reaffirm its decision on the alternate ground that the EEOC proved disparate treatment of female food servers at Joe’s.

Lastly, the majority opinion favors remand because “almost all of the evidence of intentional discrimination came in the form of conflicting witness testimony subject to lengthy cross-examination.” The majority notes that witnesses Evans, Williams, and Mommsen testified that Joe’s management told them that Joe’s did not hire female servers and actively discouraged women from applying, but also notes that Joe’s management witnesses Bass and Moorehead denied doing this. The majority observes that the district court “made no specific findings on the credibility of these witnesses, and did not specifically resolve these credibility conflicts,” and concludes that “we are not in a *1297position on appellate review to sort through this conflicting witness testimony in regard to plaintiffs intentional discrimination claims.”

I disagree. This analysis ignores that the district court did make clear and extensive factual findings that Joe’s excluded women as food servers in order to emulate an Old World fine dining experience and then cited certain evidence and quoted at length certain admissions in the testimony by Joe’s management witnesses that amply supported those factual findings. The district court was not required in its order to review and make credibility findings regarding each part of the testimony of each witness. Nor is the district court required to detail all of the other extensive trial evidence that supported its factual findings regarding why Joe’s had all male servers. Instead, our job on appeal is to review the entire record evidence in the light most favorable to the EEOC, as we must, and to determine whether that evidence amply supports the extensive factual findings the district court did make. The record evidence clearly does. The findings that the district court actually did make are more than sufficient to support liability on the alternative ground of disparate treatment. Thus, it is unnecessary to remand this case for the district court to resolve further credibility conflicts.

For all of these reasons, I would affirm the district court’s liability decision in this case.

*561Justice Kennedy

delivered the opinion of the Court.

In the fire department of New Haven, Connecticut — as in emergency-service agencies throughout the Nation — fire*562fighters prize their promotion to and within the officer ranks. An agency’s officers command respect within the department and in the whole community; and, of course, added responsibilities command increased salary and benefits. Aware of the intense competition for promotions, New Haven, like many cities, relies on objective examinations to identify the best qualified candidates.

In 2003, 118 New Haven firefighters took examinations to qualify for promotion to the rank of lieutenant or captain. Promotion examinations in New Haven (or City) were infrequent, so the stakes were high. The results would determine which firefighters would be considered for promotions during the next two years, and the order in which they would be considered. Many firefighters studied for months, at considerable personal and financial cost.

When the examination results showed that white candidates had outperformed minority candidates, the mayor and other local politicians opened a public debate that turned rancorous. Some firefighters argued the tests should be discarded because the results showed the tests to be discriminatory. They threatened a discrimination lawsuit if the City made promotions based on the tests. Other firefighters said the exams were neutral and fair. And they, in' turn, threatened a discrimination lawsuit if the City, relying on the statistical racial disparity, ignored the test results and denied promotions to the candidates who had performed well. In the end the City took the side of those who protested the test results. It threw out the examinations.

Certain white and Hispanic firefighters who likely would have been promoted based on their good test performance *563sued the City and some of its officials. Theirs is the suit now before us. The suit alleges that, by discarding the test results, the City and the named officials discriminated against the plaintiffs based on their race, in violation of both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 258, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The City and the officials defended their actions, arguing that if they had certified the results, they could have faced liability under Title VII for adopting a practice that had a disparate impact on the minority firefighters. The District Court granted summary judgment for the defendants, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

We conclude that race-based action like the City’s in this case is impermissible under Title VII unless the employer can demonstrate a strong basis in evidence that, had it not taken the action, it would have been liable under the disparate-impact statute. Respondents, we further determine, cannot meet that threshold standard. As a result, the City’s action in discarding the tests was a violation of Title VII. In light of our ruling under the statutes, we need not reach the question whether respondents’ actions may have violated the Equal Protection Clause.

I

This litigation comes to us after the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment, so we set out the facts in some detail. As the District Court noted, although “the parties strenuously dispute the relevance and legal import of, and inferences to be drawn from, many aspects of this case, the underlying facts are largely undisputed.” 554 F. Supp. 2d 142, 145 (Conn. 2006).

A

When the City of New Haven undertook to fill vacant lieutenant and captain positions in its fire department (Department), the promotion and hiring process was governed by the City charter, in addition to federal and state law. The *564charter establishes a merit system. That system requires the City to fill vacancies in the classified civil-service ranks with the most qualified individuals, as determined by job-related examinations. After each examination, the New Haven Civil Service Board (CSB) certifies a ranked list of applicants who passed the test. Under the charter’s “rule of three," the relevant hiring authority must fill each vacancy by choosing one candidate from the top three scorers on the list. Certified promotional lists remain valid for two years.

The City’s contract with the New Haven firefighters’ union specifies additional requirements for the promotion process. Under the contract, applicants for lieutenant and captain positions were to be screened using written and oral examinations, with the written exam accounting for 60 percent and the oral exam 40 percent of an applicant’s total score. To sit for the examinations, candidates for lieutenant needed 30 months’ experience in the Department, a high school diploma, and certain vocational training courses. Candidates for captain needed one year’s service as a lieutenant in the Department, a high school diploma, and certain vocational training courses.

After reviewing bids from various consultants, the City hired Industrial/Organizational Solutions, Inc. (IOS), to develop and administer the examinations, at a cost to the City of $100,000. IOS is an Illinois company that specializes in designing entry-level and promotional examinations for fire and police departments. In order to fit the examinations to the New Haven Department, IOS began the test-design process by performing job analyses to identify the tasks, knowledge, skills, and abilities that are essential for the lieutenant and captain positions. IOS representatives interviewed incumbent captains and lieutenants and their supervisors. They rode with and observed other on-duty officers. Using information from those interviews and ride-alongs, IOS wrote job-analysis questionnaires and administered them to most of the incumbent battalion chiefs, captains, and *565lieutenants in the Department. At every stage of the job analyses, IOS, by deliberate choice, oversampled minority firefighters to ensure that the results — which IOS would use to develop the examinations — would not unintentionally favor white candidates.

With the job-analysis information in hand, IOS developed the written examinations to measure the candidates’ job-related knowledge. For each test, IOS compiled a list of training manuals, Department procedures, and other materials to use as sources for the test questions. IOS presented the proposed sources to the New Haven fire chief and assistant fire chief for their approval. Then, using the approved sources, IOS drafted a multiple-choice test for each position. Each test had 100 questions, as required by CSB rules, and was written below a 10th-grade reading level. After IOS prepared the tests, the City opened a 3-month study period. It gave candidates a list that identified the source material for the questions, including the specific chapters from which the questions were taken.

IOS developed the oral examinations as well. These concentrated on job skills and abilities. Using the job-analysis information, IOS wrote hypothetical situations to test incident-command skills, firefighting tactics, interpersonal skills, leadership, and management ability, among other things. Candidates would be presented with these hypothetical and asked to respond before a panel of three assessors.

IOS assembled a pool of 30 assessors who were superior in rank to the positions being tested. At the City’s insistence (because of controversy surrounding previous examinations), all the assessors came from outside Connecticut. IOS submitted the assessors’ resumes to City officials for approval. They were battalion chiefs, assistant chiefs, and chiefs from departments of similar sizes to New Haven’s throughout the country. Sixty-six percent of the panelists were minorities, and each of the nine three-member assessment panels con*566tained two minority members. IOS trained the panelists for several hours on the day before it administered the examinations, teaching them how to score the candidates’ responses consistently using checklists of desired criteria.

Candidates took the examinations in November and December 2003. Seventy-seven candidates completed the lieutenant examination — 43 whites, 19 blacks, and 15 Hispanics. Of those, 34 candidates passed — 25 whites, 6 blacks, and 3 Hispanics. 554 F. Supp. 2d, at 145. Eight lieutenant positions were vacant at the time of the examination. As the rule of three operated, this meant that the top 10 candidates were eligible for an immediate promotion to lieutenant. All 10 were white. Ibid. Subsequent vacancies would have allowed at least 3 black candidates to be considered for promotion to lieutenant.

Forty-one candidates completed the captain examination— 25 whites, 8 blacks, and 8 Hispanics. Of those, 22 candidates passed — 16 whites, 3 blacks, and 3 Hispanics. Ibid. Seven captain positions were vacant at the time of the examination. Under the rule of three, 9 candidates were eligible for an immediate promotion to captain — 7 whites and 2 Hispanics. Ibid.

The City’s contract with IOS contemplated that, after the examinations, IOS would prepare a technical report that described the examination processes and methodologies and analyzed the results. But in January 2004, rather than requesting the technical report, City officials, including the City’s counsel, Thomas Ude, convened a meeting with IOS Vice President Chad Legel. (Legel was the leader of the IOS team that developed and administered the tests.) Based on the test results, the City officials expressed concern that the tests had discriminated against minority candidates. Legel defended the examinations’ validity, stating that any numerical disparity between white and minority candidates was likely due to various external factors and was *567in line with results of the Department’s previous promotional examinations.

Several days after the meeting, Ude sent a letter to the CSB purporting to outline its duties with respect to the examination results. Ude stated that under federal law, “a statistical demonstration of disparate impact,” standing alone, “constitutes a sufficiently serious claim of racial discrimination to serve as a predicate for employer-initiated, voluntar[y] remedies — even . . . race-conscious remedies.” App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 07-1428, p. 443a; see also 554 F. Supp. 2d, at 145 (issue of disparate impact “appears to have been raised by . . . Ude”).

1

The CSB first met to consider certifying the results on January 22, 2004. Tina Burgett, director of the City’s Department of Human Resources, opened the meeting by telling the CSB that “there is a significant disparate impact on these two exams.” App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 07-1428, at 466a. She distributed lists showing the candidates’ races and scores (written, oral, and composite) but not their names. Ude also described the test results as reflecting “a very significant disparate impact,” id., at 477a, and he outlined possible grounds for the CSB’s refusing to certify the results.

Although they did not know whether they had passed or failed, some firefighter-candidates spoke at the first CSB meeting in favor of certifying the test results. Michael Blatchley stated that “[e]very one” of the questions on the written examination “came from the [study] material.... [I]f you read the materials and you studied the material, you would have done well on the test.” App. in No. 06-4996-cv (CA2), pp. A772-A773 (hereinafter CA2 App.). Frank Ricci stated that the test questions were based on the Department’s own rules and procedures and on “nationally recognized” materials that represented the “accepted standard[s]” for firefighting. Id., at A785-A786. Ricci stated that he *568had “several learning disabilities,” including dyslexia; that he had spent more than $1,000 to purchase the materials and pay his neighbor to read them on tape so he could “give it [his] best shot”; and that he had studied “8 to 13 hours a day to prepare” for the test. Id., at A786, A789. “I don’t even know if I made it,” Ricci told the CSB, “[b]ut the people who passed should be promoted. When your life’s on the line, second best may not be good enough.” Id., at A787-A788.

Other firefighters spoke against certifying the test results. They described the test questions as outdated or not relevant to firefighting practices in New Haven. Gary Tinney stated that source materials “came out of New York. . . . Their makeup of their city and everything is totally different than ours.” Id., at A774-A775; see also id., at A779, A780-A781. And they criticized the test materials, a full set of which cost about $500, for being too expensive and too long.

2

At a second CSB meeting, on February 5, the president of the New Haven firefighters’ union asked the CSB to perform a validation study to determine whether the tests were job related. Petitioners’ counsel in this action argued that the CSB should certify the results. A representative of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters, Donald Day from neighboring Bridgeport, Connecticut, “beseech[ed]” the CSB “to throw away that test,” which he described as “inherently unfair” because of the racial distribution of the results. Id., at A830-A831. Another Bridgeport-based representative of the association, Ronald Mackey, stated that a validation study was necessary. He suggested that the City could “adjust” the test results to “meet the criteria of having a certain amount of minorities get elevated to the rank of Lieutenant and Captain.” Id., at A838. At the end of this meeting, the CSB members agreed to ask IOS to send a representative to explain how it had developed and administered the examinations. They also *569discussed asking a panel of experts to review the examinations and advise the CSB whether to certify the results.

3

At a third meeting, on February 11, Legel addressed the CSB on behalf of IOS. Legel stated that IOS had previously prepared entry-level firefighter examinations for the City but not a promotional examination. He explained that IOS had developed examinations for departments in communities with demographics similar to New Haven’s, including Orange County, Florida; Lansing, Michigan; and San Jose, California.

Legel explained the exam-development process to the CSB. He began by describing the job analyses IOS performed of the captain and lieutenant positions — the interviews, ride-alongs, and questionnaires IOS designed to “generate a list of tasks, knowledge, skills and abilities that are considered essential to performance” of the jobs. Id., at A931-A932. He outlined how IOS prepared the written and oral examinations, based on the job-analysis results, to test most heavily those qualities that the results indicated were “eritica[l]” or “essential[l].” Id., at A931. And he noted that IOS took the material for each test question directly from the approved source materials. Legel told the CSB that third-party reviewers had scrutinized the examinations to ensure that the written test was drawn from the source material and that the oral test accurately tested real-world situations that captains and lieutenants would face. Legel confirmed that IOS had selected oral-examination panelists so that each three-member assessment panel included one white, one black, and one Hispanic member.

Near the end of his remarks, Legel “implor[ed] anyone that had... concerns to review the content of the exam. In my professional opinion, it’s facially neutral. There’s nothing in those examinations ... that should cause somebody to think that one group would perform differently than another group.” Id., at A961.

*5704

At the next meeting, on March 11, the CSB heard from three witnesses it had selected to “tell us a little bit about their views of the testing, the process, [and] the methodology.” Id., at A1020. The first, Christopher Hornick, spoke to the CSB by telephone. Hornick is an industrial/organizational psychologist from Texas who operates a consulting business that “direct[ly]” competes with IOS. Id., at A1029. Hornick, who had not “studied] the test at length or in detail” and had not “seen the job analysis data,” told the CSB that the scores indicated a “relatively high adverse impact.” Id., at A1028, A1030, A1043. He stated that “[n]ormally, whites outperform ethnic minorities on the majority of standardized testing procedures,” but that he was “a little surprised” by the disparity in the candidates’ scores— although “[s]ome of it is fairly typical of what we’ve seen in other areas of the countrfy] and other tests.” Id., at A1028-A1029. Hornick stated that the “adverse impact on the written exam was somewhat higher but generally in the range that we’ve seen professionally.” Id., at A1030-A1031.

When asked to explain the New Haven test results, Hornick opined in the telephone conversation that the collective-bargaining agreement’s requirement of using written and oral examinations with a 60/40 composite score might account for the statistical disparity. He also stated that “[b]y not having anyone from within the [D]epartment review” the tests before they were administered — a limitation the City had imposed to protect the security of the exam questions — “you inevitably get things in there” that are based on the source materials but are not relevant to New Haven. Id., at A1034-A1035. Hornick suggested that testing candidates at an “assessment center” rather than using written and oral examinations “might serve [the City’s] needs better.” Id., at A1039-A1040. Hornick stated that assessment centers, where candidates face real-world situations and respond just as they would in the field, allow candi*571dates “to demonstrate how they would address a particular problem as opposed to just verbally saying it or identifying the correct option on a written test.” Ibid.

Hornick made clear that he was “not suggesting that [IOS] somehow created a test that had adverse impacts that it should not have had.” Id., at A1038. He described the IOS examinations as “reasonably good test[s].” Id., at A1041. He stated that the CSB’s best option might be to “certify the list as it exists” and work to change the process for future tests, including by “[r]ewriting the Civil Service Rules.” Ibid. Hornick concluded his telephonic remarks by telling the CSB that “for the future,” his company “certainly would like to help you if we can.” Id., at A1046.

The second witness was Vincent Lewis, a fire program specialist for the Department of Homeland Security and a retired fire captain from Michigan. Lewis, who is black, had looked “extensively” at the lieutenant exam and “a little less extensively” at the captain exam. He stated that the candidates “should know that material.” Id., at A1048, A1052. In Lewis’ view, the “questions were relevant for both exams,” and the New Haven candidates had an advantage because the study materials identified the particular book chapters from which the questions were taken. In other departments, by contrast, “you had to know basically the . . . entire book.” Id., at A1053. Lewis concluded that any disparate impact likely was due to a pattern that “usually whites outperform some of the minorities on testing,” or that “more whites . .. take the exam.” Id., at A1054.

The final witness was Janet Helms, a professor at Boston College whose “primary area of expertise” is “not with firefighters per se” but in “race and culture as they influence performance on tests and other assessment procedures.” Id., at A1060. Helms expressly declined the CSB’s offer to review the examinations. At the outset, she noted that “regardless of what kind of written test we give in this country ... we can just about predict how many people will pass *572who are members of under-represented, groups. And your data are not that inconsistent with what predictions would say were the case.” Id., at A1061. Helms nevertheless offered several “ideas about what might be possible factors” to explain statistical differences in the results. Id., at A1062. She concluded that because 67 percent of the respondents to the job-analysis questionnaires were white, the test questions might have favored white candidates, because “most of the literature on firefighters shows that the different groups perform the job differently.” Id., at A1063. Helms closed by stating that no matter what test the City had administered, it would have revealed “a disparity between blacks and whites, Hispanics and whites,” particularly on a written test. Id., at A1072.

5

At the final CSB meeting, on March 18, Ude (the City’s counsel) argued against certifying the examination results. Discussing the City’s obligations under federal law, Ude advised the CSB that a finding of adverse impact “is the beginning, not the end, of a review of testing procedures” to determine whether they violated the disparate-impact provision of Title VII. Ude focused the CSB on determining “whether there are other ways to test for ... those positions that are equally valid with less adverse impact.” Id., at A1101. Ude described Hornick as having said that the written examination “had one of the most severe adverse impacts that he had seen” and that “there are much better alternatives to identifying [firefighting] skills.” Ibid. Ude offered his “opinion that promotions ... as a result of these tests would not be consistent with federal law, would not be consistent with the purposes of our Civil Service Rules or our Charter[,] nor is it in the best interests of the firefighters ... who took the exams.” Id., at A1103-A1104. He stated that previous Department exams “have not had this kind of result,” and that previous results had not been “challenged as *573having adverse impact, whereas we are assured that these will be.” Id., at A1107, A1108.

CSB Chairman Segaloff asked Ude several questions about the Title VII disparate-impact standard.

“CHAIRPERSON SEGALOFF: [M]y understanding is the group . . . that is making to throw the exam out has the burden of showing that there is out there an exam that is reasonably probable or likely to have less of an adverse impact. It’s not our burden to show that there’s an exam out there that can be better. We’ve got an exam. We’ve got a result....

“MR. UDE: Mr. Chair, I point out that Dr. Hornick said that. He said that there are other tests out there that would have less adverse impact and that [would] be more valid.

“CHAIRPERSON SEGALOFF: You think that’s enough for us to throw this test upside-down... because Dr. Hornick said it?

“MR. UDE: I think that by itself would be sufficient. Yes. I also would point out that... it is the employer’s burden to justify the use of the examination.” Id., at A1108-A1109.

Karen DuBois-Walton, the City’s chief administrative officer, spoke on behalf of Mayor John DeStefano and argued against certifying the results. DuBois-Walton stated that the results, when considered under the rule of three and applied to then-existing captain and lieutenant vacancies, created a situation in which black and Hispanic candidates were disproportionately excluded from opportunity. DuBoisWalton also relied on Hornick’s testimony, asserting that Hornick “made it extremely clear that . . . there are more appropriate ways to assess one’s ability to serve” as a captain or lieutenant. Id., at A1120.

Burgett (the human resources director) asked the CSB to discard the examination results. She, too, relied on Hor*574nick’s statement to show the existence of alternative testing methods, describing Hornick as having “started to point out that alternative testing does exist” and as having “begun to suggest that there are some different ways of doing written examinations.” Id., at A1125, A1128.

Other witnesses addressed the CSB. They included the president of the New Haven firefighters’ union, who supported certification. He reminded the CSB that Hornick “also concluded that the tests were reasonable and fair and under the current structure to certify them.” Id., at A1137. Firefighter Frank Ricci again argued for certification; he stated that although “assessment centers in some cases show less adverse impact,” id., at A1140, they were not available alternatives for the current round of promotions. It would take several years, Ricci explained, for the Department to develop an assessment-center protocol and the accompanying training materials. Id., at A1141. Lieutenant Matthew Marcarelli, who had taken the captain’s exam, spoke in favor of certification.

At the close of witness testimony, the CSB voted on a motion to certify the examinations. With one member recused, the CSB deadlocked 2 to 2, resulting in a decision not to certify the results. Explaining his vote to certify the results, Chairman Segaloff stated that “nobody convinced me that we can feel comfortable that, in fact, there’s some likelihood that there’s going to be an exam designed that’s going to be less discriminatory.” Id., at A1159-A1160.

C

The CSB’s decision not to certify the examination results led to this lawsuit. The plaintiffs — who are the petitioners here — are 17 white firefighters and 1 Hispanic firefighter who passed the examinations but were denied a chance at promotions when the CSB refused to certify the test results. They include the named plaintiff, Frank Ricci, who addressed the CSB at multiple meetings.

*575Petitioners sued the City, Mayor DeStefano, DuBoisWalton, Ude, Burgett, and the two CSB members who voted against certification. Petitioners also named as a defendant Boise Kimber, a New Haven resident who voiced strong opposition to certifying the results. Those individuals are respondents in this Court. Petitioners filed suit under Rev. Stat. §§ 1979 and 1980, 42 U. S. C. §§ 1983 and 1985, alleging that respondents, by arguing or voting against certifying the results, violated and conspired to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Petitioners also filed timely charges of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); upon the EEOC’s issuing right-to-sue letters, petitioners amended their complaint to assert that the City violated the disparate-treatment prohibition contained in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended. See 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2(a).

The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. Respondents asserted they had a good-faith belief that they would have violated the disparate-impact prohibition in Title VII, § 2000e-2(k), had they certified the examination results. It follows, they maintained, that they cannot be held liable under Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision for attempting to comply with Title VIPs disparate-impact bar. Petitioners countered that respondents’ good-faith belief was not a valid defense to allegations of disparate treatment and unconstitutional discrimination.

The District Court granted summary judgment for respondents. 554 F. Supp. 2d 142. It described petitioners’ argument as “boil[ing] down to the assertion that if [respondents] cannot prove that the disparities on the Lieutenant and Captain exams were due to a particular flaw inherent in those exams, then they should have certified the results because there was no other alternative in place.” Id., at 156. The District Court concluded that, “ [notwithstanding the shortcomings in the evidence on existing, effective alterna*576tives, it is not the case that [respondents] must certify a test where they cannot pinpoint its deficiency explaining its disparate impact . . . simply because they have not yet formulated a better selection method.” Ibid. It also ruled that respondents’ “motivation to avoid making promotions based on a test with a racially disparate impact. . . does not, as a matter of law, constitute discriminatory intent” under Title VII. Id., at 160. The District Court rejected petitioners’ equal protection claim on the theory that respondents had not acted because of “discriminatory animus” toward petitioners. Id., at 162. It concluded that respondents’ actions were not “based on race” because “all applicants took the same test, and the result was the same for all because the test results were discarded and nobody was promoted.” Id., at 161.

After full briefing and argument by the parties, the Court of Appeals affirmed in a one-paragraph, unpublished summary order; it later withdrew that order, issuing in its place a nearly identical, one-paragraph per curiam opinion adopting the District Court’s reasoning. 580 F. 3d 87 (CA2 2008). Three days later, the Court of Appeals voted 7 to 6 to deny rehearing en bane, over written dissents by Chief Judge Jacobs and Judge Cabranes. 530 F. 3d 88.

This action presents two provisions of Title VII to be interpreted and reconciled, with few, if any, precedents in the courts of appeals discussing the issue. Depending on the resolution of the statutory claim, a fundamental constitutional question could also arise. We found it prudent and appropriate to grant certiorari. 555 U. S. 1091 (2009). We now reverse.

II

Petitioners raise a statutory claim, under the disparate-treatment prohibition of Title VII, and a constitutional claim, under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A decision for petitioners on their statutory claim would provide the relief sought, so we consider it first. *577See Atkins v. Parker, 472 U. S. 115, 123 (1985); Escambia County v. McMillan, 466 U. S. 48, 51 (1984) (per curiam) (“[N]ormally the Court will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case”).

A

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., as amended, prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Title VII prohibits both intentional discrimination (known as “disparate treatment”) as well as, in some cases, practices that are not intended to discriminate but in fact have a disproportionately adverse effect on minorities (known as “disparate impact”).

As enacted in 1964, Title VII’s principal nondiscrimination provision held employers liable only for disparate treatment. That section retains its original wording today. It makes it unlawful for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” §2000e-2(a)(1); see also 78 Stat. 255. Disparate-treatment cases present “the most easily understood type of discrimination,” Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324, 335, n. 15 (1977), and occur where an employer has “treated [a] particular person less favorably than others because of” a protected trait, Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U. S. 977, 985-986 (1988). A disparate-treatment plaintiff must establish “that the defendant had a discriminatory intent or motive” for taking a job-related action. Id., at 986.

The Civil Rights. Act of 1964 did not include an express prohibition on policies or practices that produce a disparate impact. But in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424 (1971), the Court interpreted the Act to prohibit, in some cases, employers’ facially neutral practices that, in fact, are *578“discriminatory in operation.” Id., at 431. The Griggs Court stated that the “touchstone” for disparate-impact liability is the lack of “business necessity”: “If an employment practice which operates to exclude [minorities] cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited.” Ibid.; see also id., at 432 (employer’s burden to demonstrate that practice has “a manifest relationship to the employment in question”); Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 425 (1975). Under those precedents, if an employer met its burden by showing that its practice was job related, the plaintiff was required to show a legitimate alternative that would have resulted in less discrimination. Ibid. (allowing complaining party to show “that other tests or selection devices, without a similarly undesirable racial effect, would also serve the employer’s legitimate interest”).

Twenty years after Griggs, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, 105 Stat. 1071, was enacted. The Act included a provision codifying the prohibition on disparate-impact discrimination. That provision is now in force along with the disparate-treatment section already noted. Under the disparate-impact statute, a plaintiff establishes a prima facie violation by showing that an employer uses “a particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 42 U. S. C. §2000e-2(k)(l)(A)(i). An employer may defend against liability by demonstrating that the practice is “job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” Ibid. Even if the employer meets that burden, however, a plaintiff may still succeed by showing that the employer refuses to adopt an available alternative employment practice that has less disparate impact and serves the employer’s legitimate needs. §§ 2000e-2(k)(l)(A)(ii) and (C).

B

Petitioners allege that when the CSB refused to certify the captain and lieutenant exam results based on the race of *579the successful candidates, it discriminated against them in violation of Title VIPs disparate-treatment provision. The City counters that its decision was permissible because the tests “appeared] to violate Title VIPs disparate-impact provisions.” Brief for Respondents 12.

Our analysis begins with this premise: The City’s actions would violate the disparate-treatment prohibition of Title VII absent some valid defense. All the evidence demonstrates that the City chose not to certify the examination results because of the statistical disparity based on race— i. e., how minority candidates had performed when compared to white candidates. As the District Court put it, the City rejected the test results because “too many whites and not enough minorities would be promoted were the lists to be certified.” 554 F. Supp. 2d, at 152; see also ibid, (respondents’ “own arguments . . . show that the City’s reasons for advocating non-certification were related to the racial distribution of the results”). Without some other justification, this express, race-based decisionmaking violates Title VIPs command that employers cannot take adverse employment actions because of an individual’s race. See § 2000e-2(a)(l).

The District Court did not adhere to this principle, however. It held that respondents’ “motivation to avoid making promotions based on a test with a racially disparate impact . . . does not, as a matter of law, constitute discriminatory intent.” Id., at 160. And the Government makes a similar argument in this Court. It contends that the “structure of Title VII belies any claim that an employer’s intent to comply with Title VIPs disparate-impact provisions constitutes prohibited discrimination on the basis of race.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 11. But both of those statements turn upon the City’s objective — avoiding disparate-impact liability — while ignoring the City’s conduct in the name of reaching that objective. Whatever the City’s ultimate aim — however well intentioned or benevolent it might have seemed — the City made its employment decision *580because of race. The City rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white. The question is not whether that conduct was discriminatory but whether the City had a lawful justification for its race-based action.

We consider, therefore, whether the purpose to avoid disparate-impact liability excuses what otherwise would be prohibited disparate-treatment discrimination. Courts often confront cases in which statutes and principles point in different directions. Our task is to provide guidance to employers and courts for situations when these two prohibitions could be in conflict absent a rule to reconcile them. In providing this guidance our decision must be consistent with the important purpose of Title VII — that the workplace be an environment free of discrimination, where race is not a barrier to opportunity.

With these principles in mind, we turn to the parties’ proposed means of reconciling the statutory provisions. Petitioners take a strict approach, arguing that under Title VII, it cannot be permissible for an employer to take race-based adverse employment actions in order to avoid disparate-impact liability — even if the employer knows its practice violates the disparate-impact provision. See Brief for Petitioners 43. Petitioners would have us hold that, under Title VII, avoiding unintentional discrimination cannot justify intentional discrimination. That assertion, however, ignores the fact that, by codifying the disparate-impact provision in 1991, Congress has expressly prohibited both types of discrimination. We must interpret the statute to give effect to both provisions where possible. See, e. g., United States v. Atlantic Research Corp., 551 U. S. 128,137 (2007) (rejecting an interpretation that would render a statutory provision “a dead letter”). We cannot accept petitioners’ broad and inflexible formulation.

Petitioners next suggest that an employer in fact must be in violation of the disparate-impact provision before it can *581use compliance as a defense in a disparate-treatment suit. Again, this is overly simplistic and too restrictive of Title VIFs purpose. The rule petitioners offer would run counter to what we have recognized as Congress’ intent that “voluntary compliance” be “the preferred means of achieving the objectives of Title VII.” Firefighters v. Cleveland, 478 U. S. 501, 515 (1986); see also Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 290 (1986) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Forbidding employers to act unless they know, with certainty, that a practice violates the disparate-impact provision would bring compliance efforts to a near standstill. Even in the limited situations when this restricted standard could be met, employers likely would hesitate before taking voluntary action for fear of later being proved wrong in the course of litigation and then held to account for disparate treatment.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, respondents and the Government assert that an employer’s good-faith belief that its actions are necessary to comply with Title VIFs disparate-impact provision should be enough to justify race-conscious conduct. But the original, foundational prohibition of Title VII bars employers from taking adverse action “because of... race.” § 2000e-2(a)(l). And when Congress codified the disparate-impact provision in 1991, it made no exception to disparate-treatment liability for actions taken in a good-faith effort to comply with the new, disparate-impact provision in subsection (k). Allowing employers to violate the disparate-treatment prohibition based on a mere good-faith fear of disparate-impact liability would encourage race-based action at the slightest hint of disparate impact. A minimal standard could cause employers to discard the results of lawful and beneficial promotional examinations even where there is little if any evidence of disparate-impact discrimination. That would amount to a defacto quota system, in which a “focus on statistics .. . could put undue pressure on employers to adopt inappropriate prophylactic measures.” *582 Watson, 487 U. S., at 992 (plurality opinion). Even worse, an employer could discard test results (or other employment practices) with the intent of obtaining the employer’s preferred racial balance. That operational principle could not be justified, for Title VII is express in disclaiming any interpretation of its requirements as calling for outright racial balancing. §2000e-2(j). The purpose of Title VII “is to promote hiring on the basis of job qualifications, rather than on the basis of race or color.” Griggs, 401 U. S., at 434.

In searching for a standard that strikes a more appropriate balance, we note that this Court has considered cases similar to this one, albeit in the context of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court has held that certain government actions to remedy past racial discrimination — actions that are themselves based on race— are constitutional only where there is a “ ‘strong basis in evidence’” that the remedial actions were necessary. Richmond v. J A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 500 (1989) (quoting Wygant, supra, at 277 (plurality opinion)). This suit does not call on us to consider whether the statutory constraints under Title VII must be parallel in all respects to those under the Constitution. That does not mean the constitutional authorities are irrelevant, however. Our cases discussing constitutional principles can provide helpful guidance in this statutory context. See Watson, supra, at 993 (plurality opinion).

Writing for a plurality in Wygant and announcing the strong-basis-in-evidence standard, Justice Powell recognized the tension between eliminating segregation and discrimination on the one hand and doing away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race on the other. 476 U. S., at 277. The plurality stated that those “related constitutional duties are not always harmonious,” and that “reconciling them requires ... employers to act with extraordinary care.” Ibid. The plurality required a strong basis in evidence because “[ejvidentiary support for the conclusion that *583remedial action is warranted becomes crucial when the remedial program is challenged in court by nonminority employees.” Ibid. The Court applied the same standard in Croson, observing that “an amorphous claim that there has been past discrimination . . . cannot justify the use of an unyielding racial quota.” 488 U. S., at 499.

The same interests are at work in the interplay between the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions of Title VII. Congress has imposed liability on employers for unintentional discrimination in order to rid the workplace of “practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.” Griggs, supra, at 431. But it has also prohibited employers from taking adverse employment actions “because of” race. §2000e-2(a)(1). Applying the strong-basis-in-evidence standard to Title VII gives effect to both the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions, allowing violations of one in the name of compliance with the other only in certain, narrow circumstances. The standard leaves ample room for employers’ voluntary compliance efforts, which are essential to the statutory scheme and to Congress’ efforts to eradicate workplace discrimination. See Firefighters, supra, at 515. And the standard appropriately constrains employers’ discretion in making race-based decisions: It limits that discretion to cases in which there is a strong basis in evidence of disparate-impact liability, but it is not so restrictive that it allows employers to act only when there is a provable, actual violation.

Resolving the statutory conflict in this way allows the disparate-impact prohibition to work in a manner that is consistent with other provisions of Title VII, including the prohibition on adjusting employment-related test scores on the basis of race. See §2000e-2(l). Examinations like those administered by the City create legitimate expectations on the part of those who took the tests. As is the case with any promotion exam, some of the firefighters here invested substantial time, money, and personal commitment in prepar*584ing for the tests. Employment tests can be an important part of a neutral selection system that safeguards against the very racial animosities Title VII was intended to prevent. Here, however, the firefighters saw their efforts invalidated by the City in sole reliance upon race-based statistics.

If an employer cannot rescore a test based on the candidates’ race, §2000e-2(0, then it follows a fortiori that it may not take the greater step of discarding the test altogether to achieve a more desirable racial distribution of promotion-eligible candidates — absent a strong basis in evidence that the test was deficient and that discarding the results is necessary to avoid violating the disparate-impact provision. Restricting an employer’s ability to discard test results (and thereby discriminate against qualified candidates on the basis of their race) also is in keeping with Title VII’s express protection of bona fide promotional examinations. See § 2000e-2(h) (“[N]or shall it be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to give and to act upon the results of any professionally developed ability test provided that such test, its administration or action upon the results is not designed, intended or used to discriminate because of race”); cf. AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen, 556 U. S. 701, 710 (2009).

For the foregoing reasons, we adopt the strong-basis-in-evidence standard as a matter of statutory construction to resolve any conflict between the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions of Title VII.

Our statutory holding does not address the constitutionality of the measures taken here in purported compliance with Title VII. We also do not hold that meeting the strong-basis-in-evidence standard would satisfy the Equal Protection Clause in a future case. As we explain below, because respondents have not met their burden under Title VII, we need not decide whether a legitimate fear of disparate impact is ever sufficient to justify discriminatory treatment under the Constitution.

*585Nor do we question an employer’s affirmative efforts to ensure that all groups have a fair opportunity to apply for promotions and to participate in the process by which promotions will be made. But once that process has been established and employers have made clear their selection criteria, they may not then invalidate the test results, thus upsetting an employee’s legitimate expectation not to be judged on the basis of race. Doing so, absent a strong basis in evidence of an impermissible disparate impact, amounts to the sort of racial preference that Congress has disclaimed, §2000e-2(j), and is antithetical to the notion of a workplace where individuals are guaranteed equal opportunity regardless of race.

Title VII does not prohibit an employer from considering, before administering a test or practice, how to design that test or practice in order to provide a fair opportunity for all individuals, regardless of their race. And when, during the test-design stage, an employer invites comments to ensure the test is fair, that process can provide a common ground for open discussions toward that end. We hold only that, under Title VII, before an employer can engage in intentional discrimination for the asserted purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional disparate impact, the employer must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action.

C

The City argues that, even under the strong-basis-in-evidence standard, its decision to discard the examination results was permissible under Title VII. That is incorrect. Even if respondents were motivated as a subjective matter by a desire to avoid committing disparate-impact discrimination, the record makes clear there is no support for the conclusion that respondents had an objective, strong basis in evidence to find the tests inadequate, with some consequent disparate-impact liability in violation of Title VII.

*586On this basis, we conclude that petitioners have met their obligation to demonstrate that there is “no genuine issue as to any material fact” and that they are “entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(c). On a motion for summary judgment, “facts must be viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party only if there is a ‘genuine’ dispute as to those facts.” Scott v. Harris, 550 U. S. 372, 380 (2007). “Where the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, there is no genuine issue for trial.” Matsushita Elec. Industrial Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U. S. 574, 587 (1986) (internal quotation marks omitted). In this Court, the City’s only defense is that it acted to comply with Title VII’s disparate-impact provision. To succeed on their motion, then, petitioners must demonstrate that there can be no genuine dispute that there was no strong basis in evidence for the City to conclude it would face disparate-impact liability if it certified the examination results. See Celotex Corp, v. Catrett, 477 U. S. 317, 324 (1986) (where the nonmoving party “will bear the burden of proof at trial on a dispositive issue,” the nonmoving party bears the burden of production under Rule 56 to “designate specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

The racial adverse impact here was significant, and petitioners do not dispute that the City was faced with a prima facie case of disparate-impact liability. On the captain exam, the pass rate for white candidates was 64 percent but was 37.5 percent for both black and Hispanic candidates. On the lieutenant exam, the pass rate for white candidates was 58.1 percent; for black candidates, 31.6 percent; and for Hispanic candidates, 20 percent. The pass rates of minorities, which were approximately one-half the pass rates for white candidates, fall well below the 80-percent standard set by the EEOC to implement the disparate-impact provision of Title VII. See 29 CFR § 1607.4(D) (2008) (selection rate that *587is less than 80 percent “of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded by the Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact”); Watson, 487 U. S., at 995-996, n. 3 (plurality opinion) (EEOC’s 80-percent standard is “a rule of thumb for the courts”). Based on how the passing candidates ranked and an application of the “rule of three,” certifying the examinations would have meant that the City could not have considered black candidates for any of the then-vacant lieutenant or captain positions.

Based on the degree of adverse impact reflected in the results, respondents were compelled to take a hard look at the examinations to determine whether certifying the results would have had an impermissible disparate impact. The problem for respondents is that a prima facie case of disparate-impact liability — essentially, a threshold showing of a significant statistical disparity, Connecticut v. Teal, 457 U. S. 440, 446 (1982), and nothing more — is far from a strong basis in evidence that the City would have been liable under Title VII had it certified the results. That is because the City could be liable for disparate-impact discrimination only if the examinations were not job related and consistent with business necessity, or if there existed an equally valid, less-discriminatory alternative that served the City’s needs but that the City refused to adopt. §§2000e-2(k)(l)(A), (C). We conclude there is no strong basis in evidence to establish that the tests were deficient in either of these respects. We address each of the two points in turn, based on the record developed by the parties through discovery — a record that concentrates in substantial part on the statements various witnesses made to the CSB.

1

There is no genuine dispute that the examinations were job related and consistent with business necessity. The City’s assertions to the contrary are “blatantly contradicted *588by the record.” Scott, supra, at 380. The CSB heard statements from Chad Legel (the IOS vice president) as well as City officials outlining the detailed steps IOS took to develop and administer the examinations. IOS devised the written examinations, which were the focus of the CSB’s inquiry, after painstaking analyses of the captain and lieutenant positions — analyses in which IOS made sure that minorities were overrepresented. And IOS drew the questions from source material approved by the Department. Of the outside witnesses who appeared before the CSB, only one, Vincent Lewis, had reviewed the examinations in any detail, and he was the only one with any firefighting experience. Lewis stated that the “questions were relevant for both exams.” CA2 App. A1053. The only other witness who had seen any part of the examinations, Christopher Hornick (a competitor of IOS’), criticized the fact that no one within the Department had reviewed the tests — a condition imposed by the City to protect the integrity of the exams in light of past alleged security breaches. But Hornick stated that the exams “appea[r] to be . . . reasonably good” and recommended that the CSB certify the results. Id., at A1041.

Arguing that the examinations were not job related, respondents note some candidates’ complaints that certain examination questions were contradictory or did not specifically apply to firefighting practices in New Haven. But Legel told the CSB that IOS had addressed those concerns— that it entertained “a handful” of challenges to the validity of particular examination questions, that it “reviewed those challenges and provided feedback [to the City] as to what we thought the best course of action was,” and that he could remember at least one question IOS had thrown out (“offer-ting] credit to everybody for that particular question”). Id., at A955-A957. For his part, Hornick said he “suspect[ed] that some of the criticisms ... [leveled] by candidates” were not valid. Id., at A1035.

*589The City, moreover, turned a blind eye to evidence that supported the exams’ validity. Although the City’s contract with IOS contemplated that IOS would prepare a technical report consistent with EEOC guidelines for examination-validity studies, the City made no request for its report. After the January 2004 meeting between Legel and some of the City-official respondents, in which Legel defended the examinations, the City sought no further information from IOS, save its appearance at a CSB meeting to explain how it developed and administered the examinations. IOS stood ready to provide respondents with detailed information to establish the validity of the exams, but respondents did not accept that offer.

2

Respondents also lacked a strong basis in evidence of an equally valid, less discriminatory testing alternative that the City, by certifying the examination results, would necessarily have refused to adopt. Respondents raise three arguments to the contrary, but each argument fails. First, respondents refer to testimony before the CSB that a different composite-score calculation — weighting the written and oral examination scores 30/70 — would have allowed the City to consider two black candidates for then-open lieutenant positions and one black candidate for then-open captain positions. (The City used a 60/40 weighting as required by its contract with the New Haven firefighters’ union.) But respondents have produced no evidence to show that the 60/40 weighting was indeed arbitrary. In fact, because that formula was the result of a union-negotiated collective-bargaining agreement, we presume the parties negotiated that weighting for a rational reason. Nor does the record contain any evidence that the 30/70 weighting would be an equally valid way to determine whether candidates possess the proper mix of job knowledge and situational skills to earn promotions. Changing the weighting formula, moreover, could well have violated Title VII’s prohibition of altering test scores on the *590basis of race. See § 2000e-2(l). On this record, there is no basis to conclude that a 30/70 weighting was an equally valid alternative the City could have adopted.

Second, respondents argue that the City could have adopted a different interpretation of the “rule of three” that would have produced less discriminatory results. The rule, in the New Haven city charter, requires the City to promote only from “those applicants with the three highest scores” on a promotional examination. New Haven, Conn., Code of Ordinances, Tit. I, Art. XXX, §160 (1993). A state court has interpreted the charter to prohibit so-called “banding”— the City’s previous practice of rounding scores to the nearest whole number and considering all candidates with the same whole-number score as being of one rank. Banding allowed the City to consider three ranks of candidates (with the possibility of multiple candidates filling each rank) for purposes of the rule of three. See Kelly v. New Haven, No. CV000444614,2004 WL 114377, *3 (Conn. Super. Ct., Jan. 9, 2004). Respondents claim that employing banding here would have made four black and one Hispanic candidates eligible for then-open lieutenant and captain positions.

A state court’s prohibition of banding, as a matter of municipal law under the charter, may not eliminate banding as a valid alternative under Title VII. See 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-7. We need not resolve that point, however. Here, banding was not a valid alternative for this reason: Had the City reviewed the exam results and then adopted banding to make the minority test scores appear higher, it would have violated Title VIPs prohibition of adjusting test results on the basis of race. §2000e-2(Z); see also Chicago Firefighters Local 2 v. Chicago, 249 F. 3d 649, 656 (CA7 2001) (Posner, J.) (“We have no doubt that if banding were adopted in order to make lower black scores seem higher, it would indeed be ... forbidden”). As a matter of law, banding was not an alternative available to the City when it was considering whether to certify the examination results.

*591Third, and finally, respondents refer to statements by Hornick in his telephone interview with the CSB regarding alternatives to the written examinations. Hornick stated his “belie[f]” that an “assessment center process,” which would have evaluated candidates’ behavior in typical job tasks, “would have demonstrated less adverse impac[t].” CA2 App. A1039. But Hornick’s brief mention of alternative testing methods, standing alone, does not raise a genuine issue of material fact that assessment centers were available to the City at the time of the examinations and that they would have produced less adverse impact. Other statements to the CSB indicated that the Department could not have used assessment centers for the 2003 examinations. Supra, at 574. And although respondents later argued to the CSB that Hornick had pushed the City to reject the test results, supra, at 572-574, the truth is that the essence of Hornick’s remarks supported its certifying the test results. See Scott, 550 U. S., at 380. Hornick stated that adverse impact in standardized testing “has been in existence since the beginning of testing,” CA2 App. A1037, and that the disparity in New Haven’s test results was “somewhat higher but generally in the range that we’ve seen professionally,” id., at A1030-A1031. He told the CSB he was “not suggesting” that IOS “somehow created a test that had adverse impacts that it should not have had.” Id., at A1038. And he suggested that the CSB should “certify the list as it exists.” Id., at A1041.

Especially when it is noted that the strong-basis-in-evidence standard applies, respondents cannot create a genuine issue of fact based on a few stray (and contradictory) statements in the record. And there is no doubt respondents fall short of the mark by relying entirely on isolated statements by Hornick. Hornick had not “studied] the test at length or in detail.” Id., at A1030. And as he told the CSB, he is a “direct competitor” of IOS’. Id., at A1029. The remainder of his remarks showed that Hornick’s pri*592mary concern — somewhat to the frustration of CSB members — was marketing his services for the future, not commenting on the results of the tests the City had already administered. See, e. g., id., at A1026, A1027, A1032, A1036, A1040, A1041. Hornick’s hinting had its intended effect: The City has since hired him as a consultant. As for the other outside witnesses who spoke to the CSB, Vincent Lewis (the retired fire captain) thought the CSB should certify the test results. And Janet Helms (the Boston College professor) declined to review the examinations and told the CSB that, as a society, “we need to develop a new way of assessing people.” Id., at A1073. That task was beyond the reach of the CSB, which was concerned with the adequacy of the test results before it.

3

On the record before us, there is no genuine dispute that the City lacked a strong basis in evidence to believe it would face disparate-impact liability if it certified the examination results. In other words, there is no evidence — let alone the required strong basis in evidence — that the tests were flawed because they were not job related or because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests were available to the City. Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions. The City’s discarding the test results was impermissible under Title VII, and summary judgment is appropriate for petitioners on their disparate-treatment claim.

* * *

The record in this litigation documents a process that, at the outset, had the potential to produce a testing procedure that was true to the promise of Title VII: No individual should face workplace discrimination based on race. Re*593spondents thought about promotion qualifications and relevant experience in neutral ways. They were careful to ensure broad racial participation in the design of the test itself and its administration. As we have discussed at length, the process was open and fair.

The problem, of course, is that after the tests were completed, the raw racial results became the predominant rationale for the City’s refusal to certify the results. The injury arises in part from the high, and justified, expectations of the candidates who had participated in the testing process on the terms the City had established for the promotional process. Many of the candidates had studied for months, at considerable personal and financial expense, and thus the injury caused by the City’s reliance on raw racial statistics at the end of the process was all the more severe. Confronted with arguments both for and against certifying the test results — and threats of a lawsuit either way — the City was required to make a difficult inquiry. But its hearings produced no strong evidence of a disparate-impact violation, and the City was not entitled to disregard the tests based solely on the racial disparity in the results.

Our holding today clarifies how Title VII applies to resolve competing expectations under the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions. If, after it certifies the test results, the City faces a disparate-impact suit, then in light of our holding today it should be clear that the City would avoid disparate-impact liability based on the strong basis in evidence that, had it not certified the results, it would have been subject to disparate-treatment liability.

Petitioners are entitled to summary judgment on their Title VII claim, and we therefore need not decide the underlying constitutional question. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

*594Justice Scalia,

concurring.

I join the Court’s opinion in full, but write separately to observe that its resolution of this dispute merely postpones the evil day on which the Court will have to confront the question: Whether, or to what extent, are the disparate-impact provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection? The question is not an easy one. See generally Primus, Equal Protection and Disparate Impact: Round Three, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 493 (2003).

The difficulty is this: Whether or not Title VII’s disparate-treatment provisions forbid “remedial” race-based actions when a disparate-impact violation would not otherwise result — the question resolved by the Court today — it is clear that Title VII not only permits but affirmatively requires such actions when a disparate-impact violation would otherwise result. See ante, at 580-581. But if the Federal Government is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 500 (1954), then surely it is also prohibited from enacting laws mandating that third parties — e. g., employers, whether private, state, or municipal — discriminate on the basis of race. See Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U. S. 60, 78-82 (1917). As the facts of these cases illustrate, Title VII’s disparate-impact provisions place a racial thumb on the scales, often requiring employers to evaluate the racial outcomes of their policies, and to make decisions based on (because of) those racial outcomes. That type of racial decisionmaking is, as the Court explains, discriminatory. See ante, at 578-579; Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U. S. 256, 279 (1979).

To be sure, the disparate-impact laws do not mandate imposition of quotas, but it is not clear why that should provide a safe harbor. Would a private employer not be guilty of unlawful discrimination if he refrained from establishing a racial hiring quota but intentionally designed his hiring practices to achieve the same end? Surely he would. In*595tentional discrimination is still occurring, just one step up the chain. Government compulsion of such design would therefore seemingly violate equal protection principles. Nor would it matter that Title VII requires consideration of race on a wholesale, rather than retail, level. “[T]he Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class.” Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 911 (1995) (internal quotation marks omitted). And of course the purportedly benign motive for the disparate-impact provisions cannot save the statute. See Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 227 (1995).

It might be possible to defend the law by framing it as simply an evidentiary tool used to identify genuine, intentional discrimination — to “smoke out,” as it were, disparate treatment. See Primus, supra, at 498-499, 520-521. Disparate impact is sometimes (though not always, see Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U. S. 977, 992 (1988) (plurality opinion)) a signal of something illicit, so a regulator might allow statistical disparities to play some role in the evidentiary process. Cf. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U. S. 792, 802-803 (1973). But arguably the disparate-impact provisions sweep too broadly to be fairly characterized in such a fashion — since they fail to provide an affirmative defense for good-faith (i. e., nonracially motivated) conduct, or perhaps even for good faith plus hiring standards that are entirely reasonable. See post, at 621-623, and n. 3 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (describing the demanding nature of the “business necessity” defense). This is a question that this Court will have to consider in due course. It is one thing to free plaintiffs from proving an employer’s illicit intent, but quite another to preclude the employer from proving that its motives were pure and its actions reasonable.

The Court’s resolution of these cases makes it unnecessary to resolve these matters today. But the war between disparate impact and equal protection will be waged sooner or *596later, and it behooves us to begin thinking about how — and on what terms — to make peace between them.

Justice Alito, with whom Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas join, concurring.

I join the Court’s opinion in full. I write separately only because the dissent, while claiming that “[t]he Court’s recitation of the facts leaves out important parts of the story,” post, at 609 (opinion of Ginsburg, J.), provides an incomplete description of the events that led to New Haven’s decision to reject the results of its exam. The dissent’s omissions are important because, when all of the evidence in the record is taken into account, it is clear that, even if the legal analysis in Parts II and III-A of the dissent were accepted, affirmance of the decision below is untenable.

I

When an employer in a disparate-treatment case under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 claims that an employment decision, such as the refusal to promote, was based on a legitimate reason, two questions — one objective and one subjective — must be decided. The first, objective question is whether the reason given by the employer is one that is legitimate under Title VII. See St. Mary’s Honor Center v. Hicks, 509 U. S. 502, 506-507 (1993). If the reason provided by the employer is not legitimate on its face, the employer is liable. Id., at 509. The second, subjective question concerns the employer’s intent. If an employer offers a facially legitimate reason for its decision but it turns out that this explanation was just a pretext for discrimination, the employer is again liable. See id., at 510-512.

The question on which the opinion of the Court and the dissenting opinion disagree concerns the objective component of the determination that must be made when an employer justifies an employment decision, like the one made in *597this litigation, on the ground that a contrary decision would have created a risk of disparate-impact liability. The Court holds — and I entirely agree — that concern about disparate-impact liability is a legitimate reason for a decision of the type involved here only if there was a “strong basis in evidence to find the tests inadequate.” Ante, at 585. The Court ably demonstrates that in this litigation no reasonable jury could find that the city of New Haven (City) possessed such evidence and therefore summary judgment for petitioners is required. Because the Court correctly holds that respondents cannot satisfy this objective component, the Court has no need to discuss the question of respondents’ actual intent. As the Court puts it, “[e]ven if respondents were motivated as a subjective matter by a desire to avoid committing disparate-impact discrimination, the record makes clear there is no support for the conclusion that respondents had an objective, strong basis in evidence to find the tests inadequate.” Ibid.

The dissent advocates a different objective component of the governing standard. According to the dissent, the objective component should be whether the evidence provided “good cause” for the decision, post, at 625, and the dissent argues — incorrectly, in my view — that no reasonable juror could fail to find that such evidence was present here. But even if the dissent were correct on this point, I assume that the dissent would not countenance summary judgment for respondents if respondents’ professed concern about disparate-impact litigation was simply a pretext. Therefore, the decision below, which sustained the entry of summary judgment for respondents, cannot be affirmed unless no reasonable jury could find that the City’s asserted reason for scrapping its test — concern about disparate-impact liability — was a pretext and that the City’s real reason was illegitimate, namely, the desire to placate a politically important racial constituency.

*598II

A

As initially described by the dissent, see post, at 609-618, the process by which the City reached the decision not to accept the test results was open, honest, serious, and deliberative. But even the District Court admitted that “a jury could rationally infer that city officials worked behind the scenes to sabotage the promotional examinations because they knew that, were the exams certified, the Mayor would incur the wrath of [Rev. Boise] Kimber and other influential leaders of New Haven’s African-American community.” 554 F. Supp. 2d 142, 162 (Conn. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted), summarily aff’d, 530 F. 3d 87 (CA2 2008) (per curiam).

This admission finds ample support in the record. Rev. Boise Kimber, to whom the District Court referred, is a politically powerful New Haven pastor and a self-professed “‘kingmaker.’” App. to Pet. for Cert, in No. 07-1428, p. 906a; see also id., at 909a. On one occasion, “[i]n front of TV cameras, he threatened a race riot during the murder trial of the black man arrested for killing white Yalie Christian Prince. He continues to call whites racist if they question his actions.” Id., at 931a.

Reverend Kimber’s personal ties with seven-term New Haven Mayor John DeStefano (Mayor) stretch back more than a decade. In 1996, for example, Mayor DeStefano testified for Reverend Kimber as a character witness when Reverend Kimber — then the manager of a funeral home — was prosecuted and convicted for stealing prepaid funeral expenses from an elderly woman and then lying about the matter under oath. See id., at 126a, 907a. “Reverend Kimber has played a leadership role in all of Mayor DeStefano’s political campaigns, [and] is considered a valuable political supporter and vote-getter.” Id., at 126a. According to the Mayor’s former campaign manager (who is currently his executive assistant), Reverend Kimber is an invaluable political *599asset because “[h]e’s very good at organizing people and putting together field operations, as a result of his ties to labor, his prominence in the religious community and his longstanding commitment to roots.” Id., at 908a (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted).

In 2002, the Mayor picked Reverend Kimber to serve as the chairman of the New Haven Board of Fire Commissioners (BFC), “despite the fact that he had no experience in the profession, fire administration, [or] municipal management.” Id., at 127a; see also id., at 928a-929a. In that capacity, Reverend Kimber told firefighters that certain new recruits would not be hired because “ ‘they just have too many vowels in their name[s].’” Thanawala, New Haven Fire Panel Chairman Steps Down Over Racial Slur, Hartford Courant, June 13, 2002, p. B2. After protests about this comment, Reverend Kimber stepped down as chairman of the BFC, ibid.; see also App. to Pet. for Cert, in No. 07-1428, at 929a, but he remained on the BFC and retained “a direct line to the mayor,” id., at 816a.

Almost immediately after the test results were revealed in “early January” 2004, Reverend Kimber called the City’s chief administrative officer, Karen Dubois-Walton, who “acts ‘on behalf of the Mayor.’” Id., at 221a, 812a. DuboisWalton and Reverend Kimber met privately in her office because he wanted “to express his opinion” about the test results and “to have some influence” over the City’s response. Id., at 815a-816a. As discussed in further detail below, Reverend Kimber adamantly opposed certification of the test results — a fact that he or someone in the Mayor’s office eventually conveyed to the Mayor. Id., at 229a.

B

On January 12, 2004, Tina Burgett (the director of the City’s Department of Human Resources) sent an e-mail to Dubois-Walton to coordinate the City’s response to the test results. Burgett wanted to clarify that the City’s executive *600officials would meet “sans the Chief, and that once we had a better fix on the next steps we would meet with the Mayor (possibly) and then the two Chiefs.” Id., at 446a. The “two Chiefs” are Fire Chief William Grant (who is white) and Assistant Fire Chief Ronald Dumas (who is African-American). Both chiefs believed that the test results should be certified. Id., at 228a, 817a. Petitioners allege, and the record suggests, that the Mayor and his staff colluded “sans the Chief[s]” because “the defendants did not want Grant’s and Dumas’ views to be expressed or known; accordingly both men were prevented by the Mayor and his staff from making any statements regarding the matter.” Id., at 228a.1

The next day, on January 13, 2004, Chad Legel, who had designed the tests, flew from Chicago to New Haven to meet with Dubois-Walton, Burgett, and Thomas Ude, the City’s corporate counsel. Id., at 179a. “Legel outlined the merits of the examination and why city officials should be confident in the validity of the results.” Ibid. But according to Legel, Dubois-Walton was “argumentative” and apparently had already made up her mind that the tests were “ ‘discriminatory.’ ” Id., at 179a-180a. Again according to Legel, “[a] theme” of the meeting was “the political and racial overtones of what was going on in the City.” Id., at 181a. “Legel came away from the January 13, 2004 meeting with the impression that defendants were already leaning toward discarding the examination results.” Id., at 180a.

On January 22, 2004, the Civil Service Board (CSB or Board) convened its first public meeting. Almost immediately, Reverend Kimber began to exert political pressure on the CSB. He began a loud, minutes-long outburst that required the CSB chairman to shout him down and hold him out of order three times. See id., at 187a, 467a-468a; see *601also App. in No. 06-4996-cv (CA2), pp. A703-A705. Reverend Kimber protested the public meeting, arguing that he and the other fire commissioners should first be allowed to meet with the CSB in private. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 07-1428, at 188a.

Four days after the CSB’s first meeting, Mayor DeStefano’s executive aide sent an e-mail to Dubois-Walton, Burgett, and Ude. Id., at 190a. The message clearly indicated that the Mayor had made up his mind to oppose certification of the test results (but nevertheless wanted to conceal that fact from the public):

“I wanted to make sure we are all on the same page for this meeting tomorrow. . . . [LJet’s remember, that these folks are not against certification yet. So we can’t go in and tell them that is our position; we have to deliberate and arrive there as the fairest and most cogent outcome.” Ibid.

On February 5, 2004, the CSB convened its second public meeting. Reverend Kimber again testified and threatened the CSB with political recriminations if they voted to certify the test results:

“I look at this [Board] tonight. I look at three whites and one Hispanic and no blacks. ... I would hope that you would not put yourself in this type of position, a political ramification that may come back upon you as you sit on this [Board] and decide the future of a department and the future of those who are being promoted.

“(APPLAUSE).” Id., at 492a (emphasis added).

One of the CSB members “t[ook] great offense” because he believed that Reverend Kimber “considered] [him] a bigot because [his] face is white.” Id., at 496a. The offended *602CSB member eventually voted not to certify the test results. Id., at 586a-587a.

One of Reverend Kimber’s “friends and allies,” Lieutenant Gary Tinney, also exacerbated racial tensions before the CSB. Id., at 129a. After some firefighters applauded in support of certifying the test results, “Lt. Tinney exclaimed, ‘Listen to the Klansmen behind us.’” Id., at 225a.

Tinney also has strong ties to the Mayor’s office. See, e. g., id., at 129a-130a, 816a-817a. After learning that he had not scored well enough on the captain’s exam to earn a promotion, Tinney called Dubois-Walton and arranged a meeting in her office. Id., at 830a-831a, 836a. Tinney alleged that the white firefighters had cheated on their exams — an accusation that Dubois-Walton conveyed to the Board without first conducting an investigation into its veracity. Id., at 837a-838a; see also App. 164 (statement of CSB chairman, noting the allegations of cheating). The allegation turned out to be baseless. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 07-1428, at 836a.

Dubois-Walton never retracted the cheating allegation, but she and other executive officials testified several times before the CSB. In accordance with directions from the May- or’s office to make the CSB meetings appear deliberative, see id., at 190a, executive officials remained publicly uncommitted about certification — while simultaneously “work[ing] as a team” behind closed doors with the secretary of the CSB to devise a political message that would convince the CSB to vote against certification, see id., at 447a. At the public CSB meeting on March 11, 2004, for example, Corporation Counsel Ude bristled at one board member’s suggestion that City officials were recommending against certifying the test results. See id., at 215a (“Attorney Ude took offense, stating, ‘Frankly, because I would never make a recommendation — I would not have made a recommendation like that’ ”). But within days of making that public statement, Ude privately told other members of the Mayor’s team “the ONLY *603way we get to a decision not to certify is” to focus on something other than “a big discussion re: adverse impact” law. Id., at 458a-459a.

As part of its effort to deflect attention from the specifics of the test, the City relied heavily on the testimony of Dr. Christopher Hornick, who is one of Chad Legel’s competitors in the test-development business. Hornick never “stud-tied] the test [that Legel developed] at length or in detail,” id., at 549a; see also id., at 203a, 553a, but Hornick did review and rely upon literature sent to him by Burgett to criticize Legel’s test. For example, Hornick “noted in the literature that [Burgett] sent that the test was not customized to the New Haven Fire Department.” Id., at 551a. The chairman of the CSB immediately corrected Hornick. Id., at 552a (“Actually, it was, Dr. Hornick”). Hornick also relied on newspaper accounts — again, sent to him by Burgett — pertaining to the controversy surrounding the certification decision. See id., at 204a, 557a. Although Hornick again admitted that he had no knowledge about the actual test that Legel had developed and that the City had administered, see id., at 560a-561a, the City repeatedly relied upon Hornick as a testing “guru” and, in the CSB chairman’s words, “the City ke[pt] quoting him as a person that we should rely upon more than anybody else [to conclude that there] is a better way— a better mousetrap.”2 App. in No. 06-4996-cv (CA2), at A1128. Dubois-Walton later admitted that the City rewarded Hornick for his testimony by hiring him to develop and administer an alternative test. App. to Pet. for Cert. in *604No. 07-1428, at 854a; see also id., at 562a-563a (Hornick’s plea for future business from the City on the basis of his criticisms of Legel’s tests).

At some point prior to the CSB’s public meeting on March 18,2004, the Mayor decided to use his executive authority to disregard the test results — even if the CSB ultimately voted to certify them. Id., at 819a-820a. Accordingly, on the evening of March 17th, Dubois-Walton sent an e-mail to the Mayor, the Mayor’s executive assistant, Burgett, and attorney Ude, attaching two alternative press releases. Id., at 457a. The first would be issued if the CSB voted not to certify the test results; the second would be issued (and would explain the Mayor’s invocation of his executive authority) if the CSB voted to certify the test results. Id., at 217a-218a, 590a-591a, 819a-820a. Half an hour after Dubois-Walton circulated the alternative drafts, Burgett replied: “[W]ell, that seems to say it all. Let’s hope draft #2 hits the shredder tomorrow nite.” Id., at 457a.

Soon after the CSB voted against certification, Mayor De-Stefano appeared at a dinner event and “took credit for the scu[tt]ling of the examination results.” Id., at 230a.

C

Taking into account all the evidence in the summary judgment record, a reasonable jury could find the following. Almost as soon as the City disclosed the racial makeup of the list of firefighters who scored the highest on the exam, the City administration was lobbied by an influential community leader to scrap the test results, and the City administration decided on that course of action before making any real assessment of the possibility of a disparate-impact violation. To achieve that end, the City administration concealed its internal decision but worked — as things turned out, successfully — to persuade the CSB that acceptance of the test results would be illegal and would expose the City to disparate-impact liability. But in the event that the CSB *605was not persuaded, the Mayor, wielding ultimate decision-making authority, was prepared to overrule the CSB immediately. Taking this view of the evidence, a reasonable jury could easily find that the City’s real reason for scrapping the test results was not a concern about violating the disparate-impact provision of Title VII but a simple desire to please a politically important racial constituency. It is noteworthy that the Solicitor General — whose position on the principal legal issue here is largely aligned with the dissent — eon-' eludes that “[n]either the district court nor the court of appeals . . . adequately considered whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to petitioners, a genuine issue of material fact remained whether respondents’ claimed purpose to comply with Title VII was a pretext for intentional racial discrimination . . . .” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 6; see also id., at 32-33.

Ill

I will not comment at length on the dissent’s criticism of my analysis, but two points require a response.

The first concerns the dissent’s statement that I “equat[e] political considerations with unlawful discrimination.” Post, at 642. The dissent misrepresents my position: I draw no such equation. Of course “there are many ways in which a politician can attempt to win over a constituency — including a racial constituency — without engaging in unlawful discrimination.” Ibid. But — as I assume the dissent would agree — there are some things that a public official cannot do, and one of those is engaging in intentional racial discrimination when making employment decisions.

The second point concerns the dissent’s main argument— that efforts by the Mayor and his staff to scuttle the test results are irrelevant because the ultimate decision was made by the CSB. According to the dissent, “[t]he relevant decision was made by the CSB,” post, at 640, and there is “scant cause to suspect” that anything done by the opponents *606of certification, including the Mayor and his staff, “prevented the CSB from evenhandedly assessing the reliability of the exams and rendering an independent, good-faith decision on certification,” post, at 641.

Adoption of the dissent’s argument would implicitly decide an important question of Title VII law that this Court has never resolved — the circumstances in which an employer may be held liable based on the discriminatory intent of subordinate employees who influence but do not make the ultimate employment decision. There is a large body of Court of Appeals case law on this issue, and these cases disagree about the proper standard. See EEOC v. BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles, 450 F. 3d 476, 484-488 (CA10 2006) (citing cases and describing the approaches taken in different Circuits). One standard is whether the subordinate “exerted influencie] over the titular decisionmaker.” Russell v. McKinney Hosp. Venture, 235 F. 3d 219, 227 (CA5 2000); see also Poland v. Chertoff, 494 F. 3d 1174, 1182 (CA9 2007) (A subordinate’s bias is imputed to the employer where the subordinate “influenced or was involved in the decision or decisionmaking process”). Another is whether the discriminatory input “caused the adverse employment action.” See BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles, supra, at 487.

In the present cases, a reasonable jury could certainly find that these standards were met. The dissent makes much of the fact that members of the CSB swore under oath that their votes were based on the good-faith belief that certification of the results would have violated federal law. See post, at 640. But the good faith of the CSB members would not preclude a finding that the presentations engineered by the Mayor and his staff influenced or caused the CSB decision.

The least employee-friendly standard asks only whether “the actual decisionmaker” acted with discriminatory intent, see Hill v. Lockheed Martin Logistics Management, Inc., *607354 F. 3d 277, 291 (CA4 2004) (en banc), and it is telling that, even under this standard, summary judgment for respondents would not be proper. This is so because a reasonable jury could certainly find that in New Haven, the Mayor — not the CSB — wielded the final decisionmaking power. After all, the Mayor claimed that authority and was poised to use it in the event that the CSB decided to accept the test results. See supra, at 604. If the Mayor had the authority to overrule a CSB decision accepting the test results, the Mayor also presumably had the authority to overrule the CSB’s decision rejecting the test results. In light of the Mayor’s conduct, it would be quite wrong to throw out petitioners’ case on the ground that the CSB was the ultimate decisionmaker.

* * *

Petitioners are firefighters who seek only a fair chance to move up the ranks in their chosen profession. In order to qualify for promotion, they made personal sacrifices. Petitioner Frank Ricci, who is dyslexic, found it necessary to “hir[e] someone, at considerable expense, to read onto audiotape the content of the books and study materials].” App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 07-1428, at 169a. He “studied an average of eight to thirteen hours a day ... , even listening to audio tapes while driving his car.” Ibid. Petitioner Benjamin Vargas, who is Hispanic, had to “give up a part-time job,” and his wife had to “take leave from her own job in order to take care of their three young children while Vargas studied.” Id., at 176a. “Vargas devoted countless hours to study..., missed two of his children’s birthdays and over two weeks of vacation time,” and “incurred significant financial expense” during the 3-month study period. Id., at 176a-177a.

Petitioners were denied promotions for which they qualified because of the race and ethnicity of the firefighters who achieved the highest scores on the City’s exam. The District Court threw out their case on summary judgment, even *608though that court all but conceded that a jury could find that the City’s asserted justification was pretextual. The Court of Appeals then summarily affirmed that decision.

The dissent grants that petitioners’ situation is “unfortunate” and that they “understandably attract this Court’s sympathy.” Post this page and 644. But “sympathy” is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law — of Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today’s decision, has been denied them.

Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.

In assessing claims of race discrimination, “[c]ontext matters.” Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 327 (2003). In 1972, Congress extended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to cover public employment. At that time, municipal fire departments across the country, including New Haven’s, pervasively discriminated against minorities. The extension of Title VII to cover jobs in firefighting effected no overnight change. It took decades of persistent effort, advanced by Title VII litigation, to open firefighting posts to members of racial minorities.

The white firefighters who scored high on New Haven’s promotional exams understandably attract this Court’s sympathy. But they had no vested right to .promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them. New Haven maintains that it refused to certify the test results because it believed, for good cause, that it would be vulnerable to a Title VII disparate-impact suit if it relied on those results. The Court today holds that New Haven has not demonstrated “a strong basis in evidence” for its plea. Ante, at 563. In so holding, the Court pretends that “[t]he City rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white. ” Ante, at 580. That preten*609sion, essential to the Court’s disposition, ignores substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used. The Court similarly fails to acknowledge the better tests used in other cities, which have yielded less racially skewed outcomes.1

By order of this Court, New Haven, a city in which African-Americans and Hispanics account for nearly 60 percent of the population, must today be served — as it was in the days of undisguised discrimination — by a fire department in which members of racial and ethnic minorities are rarely seen in command positions. In arriving at its order, the Court barely acknowledges the pathmarking decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424 (1971), which explained the centrality of the disparate-impact concept to effective enforcement of Title VII. The Court’s order and opinion, I anticipate, will not have staying power.

I

A

The Court’s recitation of the facts leaves out important parts of the story. Firefighting is a profession in which the legacy of racial discrimination casts an especially long shadow. In extending Title VII to state and local government employers in 1972, Congress took note of a U. S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) report finding racial discrimination in municipal employment even “more pervasive than in the private sector.” H. R. Rep. No. 92-288, p. 17 (1971). According to the report, overt racism was partly to blame, but so too was a failure on the part of municipal em*610ployers to apply merit-based employment principles. In making hiring and promotion decisions, public employers often “rel[ied] on criteria unrelated to job performance,” including nepotism or political patronage. 118 Cong. Rec. 1817 (1972). Such flawed selection methods served to entrench preexisting racial hierarchies. The USCCR report singled out police and fire departments for having “[bjarriers to equal employment. . . greater . . . than in any other area of State or local government,” with African-Americans “holding] almost no positions in the officer ranks.” Ibid. See also National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control, America Burning 5 (1973) (“Racial minorities are under-represented in the fire departments in nearly every community in which they live.”).

The city of New Haven (City) was no exception. In the early 1970’s, African-Americans and Hispanics composed 30 percent of New Haven’s population, but only 3.6 percent of the City’s 502 firefighters. The racial disparity in the officer ranks was even more pronounced: “[O]f the 107 officers in the Department only one was black, and he held the lowest rank above private.” Firebird Soc. of New Haven, Inc. v. New Haven Bd. of Fire Comm’rs, 66 F. R. D. 457, 460 (Conn. 1975).

Following a lawsuit and settlement agreement, see ibid., the City initiated efforts to increase minority representation in the New Haven Fire Department (Department). Those litigation-induced efforts produced some positive change. New Haven’s population includes a greater proportion of minorities today than it did in the 1970’s: Nearly 40 percent of the City’s residents are African-American and more than 20 percent are Hispanic. Among entry-level firefighters, minorities are still underrepresented, but not starkly so. As of 2003, African-Americans and Hispanics constituted 30 percent and 16 percent of the City’s firefighters, respectively. In supervisory positions, however, significant disparities remain. Overall, the senior officer ranks (captain and higher) *611are nine percent African-American and nine percent Hispanic. Only one of the Department’s 21 fire captains is African-American. See App. in No. 06-4996-cv (CA2), p. A1588 (hereinafter CA2 App.). It is against this backdrop of entrenched inequality that the promotion process at issue in this litigation should be assessed.

B

By order of its charter, New Haven must use competitive examinations to fill vacancies in fire-officer and other civil-service positions. Such examinations, the City’s civil-service rules specify, “shall be practical in nature, shall relate to matters which fairly measure the relative fitness and capacity of the applicants to discharge the duties of the position which they seek, and shall take into account character, training, experience, physical and mental fitness.” Id., at A331. The City may choose among a variety of testing methods, including written and oral exams and “[performance tests to demonstrate skill and ability in performing actual work.” Id., at A332.

New Haven, the record indicates, did not closely consider what sort of “practical” examination would “fairly measure the relative fitness and capacity of the applicants to discharge the duties” of a fire officer. Instead, the City simply adhered to the testing regime outlined in its two-decades-old contract with the local firefighters’ union: a written exam, which would account for 60 percent of an applicant’s total score, and an oral exam, which would account for the remaining 40 percent. Id., at A1045. In soliciting bids from exam development companies, New Haven made clear that it would entertain only “proposals that include a written component that will be weighted at 60%, and an oral component that will be weighted at 40%. ” Id., at A342. Chad Legel, a representative of the winning bidder, Industrial/Organizational Solutions, Inc. (IOS), testified during his deposition that the City never asked whether alternative methods *612might better measure the qualities of a successful fire officer, including leadership skills and command presence. See id., at A522 (“I was under contract and had responsibility only to create the oral interview and the written exam.”).

Pursuant to New Haven’s specifications, IOS developed and administered the oral and written exams. The results showed significant racial disparities. On the lieutenant exam, the pass rate for African-American candidates was about one-half the rate for Caucasian candidates; the pass rate for Hispanic candidates was even lower. On the captain exam, both African-American and Hispanic candidates passed at about half the rate of their Caucasian counterparts. See App. 225-226. More striking still, although nearly half of the 77 lieutenant candidates were African-American or Hispanic, none would have been eligible for promotion to the eight positions then vacant. The highest scoring African-American candidate ranked 13th; the top Hispanic candidate was 26th. As for the seven then-vacant captain positions, two Hispanic candidates would have been eligible, but no African-Americans. The highest scoring African-American candidate ranked 15th. See id., at 218-219.

These stark disparities, the Court acknowledges, sufficed to state a prima facie case under Title VII’s disparate-impact provision. See ante, at 586 (“The pass rates of minorities ... f[e]ll well below the 80-percent standard set by the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)] to implement the disparate-impact provision of Title VII.”). New Haven thus had cause for concern about the prospect of Title VII litigation and liability. City officials referred the matter to the New Haven Civil Service Board (CSB), the entity responsible for certifying the results of employment exams.

Between January and March 2004, the CSB held five public meetings to consider the proper course. At the first meeting, New Haven’s Corporation Counsel, Thomas Ude, described the legal standard governing Title VII disparate-impact claims. Statistical imbalances alone, Ude correctly *613recognized, do not give rise to liability. Instead, presented with a disparity, an employer “has the opportunity and the burden of proving that the test is job-related and consistent with business necessity.” CA2 App. A724. A Title VII plaintiff may attempt to rebut an employer’s showing of job-relatedness and necessity by identifying alternative selection methods that would have been at least as valid but with “less of an adverse or disparate or discriminatory effect.” Ibid. See also id., at A738. Accordingly, the CSB commissioners understood, their principal task was to decide whether they were confident about the reliability of the exams: Had the exams fairly measured the qualities of a successful fire officer despite their disparate results? Might an alternative examination process have identified the most qualified candidates without creating sueh significant racial imbalances?

Seeking a range of input on these questions, the CSB heard from test takers, the test designer, subject-matter experts, City officials, union leaders, and community members. Several candidates for promotion, who did not yet know their exam results, spoke at the CSB’s first two meetings. Some candidates favored certification. The exams, they emphasized, had closely tracked the assigned study materials. Having invested substantial time and money to prepare themselves for the test, they, felt it would be unfair to scrap the results. See, e. g., id., at A772-A773, A785-A789.

Other firefighters had a different view. A number of the exam questions, they pointed out, were not germane to New Haven’s practices and procedures. See, e. g., id., at A774-A784. At least two candidates opposed to certification noted unequal access to study materials. Some individuals, they asserted, had the necessary books even before the syllabus was issued. Others had to invest substantial sums to purchase the materials and “wait a month and a half for some of the books because they were on back-order.” Id., at A858. These disparities, it was suggested, fell at least in part along racial lines. While many Caucasian applicants could obtain *614materials and assistance from relatives in the fire service, the overwhelming majority of minority applicants were “first-generation firefighters” without such support networks. See id., at A857-A861, A886-A887.

A representative of the Northeast Region of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters, Donald Day, also spoke at the second meeting. Statistical disparities, he told the CSB, had been present in the Department’s previous promotional exams. On earlier tests, however, a few minority candidates had fared well enough to earn promotions. Id., at A828. See also App. 218-219. Day contrasted New Haven’s experience with that of nearby Bridgeport, where minority firefighters held one-third of lieutenant and captain positions. Bridgeport, Day observed, had once used a testing process similar to New Haven’s, with a written exam accounting for 70 percent of an applicant’s score, an oral exam for 25 percent, and seniority for the remaining five percent. CA2 App. A830. Bridgeport recognized, however, that the oral component, more so than the written component, addressed the sort of “real-life scenarios” fire officers encounter on the job. Id., at A832. Accordingly, that city “changed the relative weights” to give primacy to the oral exam. Ibid. Since that time, Day reported, Bridgeport had seen minorities “fairly represented” in its exam results. Ibid.

The CSB’s third meeting featured IOS representative Legel, the leader of the team that had designed and administered the exams for New Haven. Several City officials also participated in the discussion. Legel described the exam development process in detail. The City, he recounted, had set the “parameters” for the exams, specifically, the requirement of written and oral components with a 60/40 weighting. Id., at A923, A974. For security reasons, Department officials had not been permitted to check the content of the questions prior to their administration. Instead, IOS retained a senior fire officer from Georgia to review the exams “for con*615tent and fidelity to the source material.” Id., at A936. Legel defended the exams as “facially neutral,” and stated that he “would stand by the[ir] validity.” Id., at A962. City officials did not dispute the neutrality of IOS’s work. But, they cautioned, even if individual exam questions had no intrinsic bias, the selection process as a whole may nevertheless have been deficient. The officials urged the CSB to consult with experts about the “larger picture.” Id., at A1012.

At its fourth meeting, CSB solicited the views of three individuals with testing-related expertise. Dr. Christopher Hornick, an industrial/organizational psychology consultant with 25 years’ experience with police and firefighter testing, described the exam results as having “relatively high adverse impact.” Id., at A1028. Most of the tests he had developed, Hornick stated, exhibited “significantly and dramatically less adverse impact.” Id., at A1029. Hornick downplayed the notion of “facial neutrality.” It was more important, he advised the CSB, to consider “the broader issue of how your procedures and your rules and the types of tests that you are using are contributing to the adverse impact.” Id., at A1038.

Specifically, Hornick questioned New Haven’s union-prompted 60/40 written/oral examination structure, noting the availability of “different types of testing procedures that are much more valid in terms of identifying the best potential supervisors in [the] fire department.” Id., at A1032. He suggested, for example, “an assessment center process, which is essentially an opportunity for candidates ... to demonstrate how they would address a particular problem as opposed to just verbally saying it or identifying the correct option on a written test.” Id., at A1039-A1040. Such selection processes, Hornick said, better “identify] the best possible people” and “demonstrate dramatically less adverse impacts.” Ibid. Hornick added:

*616“I’ve spoken to at least 10,000, maybe 15,000, firefighters in group settings in my consulting practice and I have never one time ever had anyone in the fire service say to me, ‘Well, the person who answers — gets the highest score on a written job knowledge, multiple-guess test makes the best company officer.’ We know that it’s not as valid as other procedures that exist.” Id., at A1033.

See also id., at A1042-A1043 (“I think a person’s leadership skills, their command presence, their interpersonal skills, their management skills, their tactical skills could have been identified and evaluated in a much more appropriate way.”).

Hornick described the written test itself as “reasonably good,” id., at A1041, but he criticized the decision not to allow Department officials to check the content. According to Hornick, this “inevitably” led to “test[ing] for processes and procedures that don’t necessarily match up into the department.” Id., at A1034-A1035. He preferred “experts from within the department who have signed confidentiality agreements ... to make sure that the terminology and equipment that’s being identified from standardized reading sources apply to the department.” Id., at A1035.

Asked whether he thought the City should certify the results, Hornick hedged: “There is adverse impact in the test. That will be identified in any proceeding that you have. You will have industrial psychology experts, if it goes to court, on both sides. And it will not be a pretty or comfortable position for anyone to be in.” Id., at A1040-A1041. Perhaps, he suggested, New Haven might certify the results but immediately begin exploring “alternative ways to deal with these issues” in the future. Id., at A1041.

The two other witnesses made relatively brief appearances. Vincent Lewis, a specialist with the Department of Homeland Security and former fire officer in Michigan, believed the exams had generally tested relevant material, although he noted a relatively heavy emphasis on questions *617pertaining to being an “apparatus driver.” He suggested that this may have disadvantaged test takers “who had not had the training or had not had an opportunity to drive the apparatus.” Id., at A1051. He also urged the CSB to consider whether candidates had, in fact, enjoyed equal access to the study materials. Ibid. Cf. supra, at 613-614.

Janet Helms, a professor of counseling psychology at Boston College, observed that two-thirds of the incumbent fire officers who submitted job analyses to IOS during the exam-design phase were Caucasian. Members of different racial groups, Helms told the CSB, sometimes do their jobs in different ways, “often because the experiences that are open to white male firefighters are not open to members of these other under-represented groups.” CA2 App. A1063-A1064. The heavy reliance on job analyses from white firefighters, she suggested, may thus have introduced an element of bias. Id., at A1063.

The CSB’s fifth and final meeting began with statements from City officials recommending against certification. Ude, New Haven’s counsel, repeated the applicable disparate-impact standard:

“[A] finding of adverse impact is the beginning, not the end, of a review of testing procedures. Where a procedure demonstrates adverse impact, you look to how closely it is related to the job that you’re looking to fill and you also look at whether there are other ways to test for those qualities, those traits, those positions that are equally valid with less adverse impact.” Id., at A1100-A1101.

New Haven, Ude and other officials asserted, would be vulnerable to Title VII liability under this standard. Even if the exams were “facially neutral,” significant doubts had been raised about whether they properly assessed the key attributes of a successful fire officer. Id., at A1103. See also id., at A1125 (“Upon close reading of the exams, the *618questions themselves would appear to test a candidate’s ability to memorize textbooks but not necessarily to identify solutions to real problems on the fire ground.”). Moreover, City officials reminded the CSB, Hornick and others had identified better, less discriminatory selection methods— such as assessment centers or exams with a more heavily weighted oral component. Id., at A1108-A1109, A1129-A1130.

After giving members of the public a final chance to weigh in, the CSB voted on certification, dividing 2 to 2. By rule, the result was noncertification. Voting no, Commissioner Webber stated, “I originally was going to vote to certify. . . . But I’ve heard enough testimony here to give me great doubts about the test itself and . . . some of the procedures. And I believe we can do better.” Id., at A1157. Commissioner Tirado likewise concluded that the “flawed” testing process counseled against certification. Id., at A1158. Chairman Segaloff and Commissioner Caplan voted to certify. According to Segaloff, the testimony had not “compelled [him] to say this exam was not job-related,” and he was unconvinced that alternative selection processes would be “less discriminatory.” Id., at A1159-A1160. Both Segaloff and Caplan, however, urged the City to undertake civil-service reform. Id., at A1150-A1154.

C

Following the CSB’s vote, petitioners — 17 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter, all of whom had high marks on the exams — filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. They named as defendants — respondents here — the City, several City officials, a local political activist, and the two CSB members who voted against certifying the results. By opposing certification, petitioners alleged, respondents had discriminated against them in violation of Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protec*619tion Clause. The decision not to certify, respondents answered, was a lawful effort to comply with Title VII’s disparate-impact provision and thus could not have run afoul of Title VII’s prohibition of disparate treatment. Characterizing respondents’ stated rationale as a mere pretext, petitioners insisted that New Haven would have had a solid defense to any disparate-impact suit.

In a decision summarily affirmed by the Court of Appeals, the District Court granted summary judgment for respondents. 554 F. Supp. 2d 142 (Conn. 2006), aff’d, 530 F. 3d 87 (CA2 2008) (per curiam). Under Second Circuit precedent, the District Court explained, “the intent to remedy the disparate impact” of a promotional exam “is not equivalent to an intent to discriminate against non-minority applicants.” 554 F. Supp. 2d, at 157 (quoting Hayden v. County of Nassau, 180 F. 3d 42, 51 (CA2 1999)). Rejecting petitioners’ pretext argument, the court observed that the exam results were sufficiently skewed “to make out a prima facie case of discrimination” under Title VII’s disparate-impact provision. 554 F. Supp. 2d, at 158. Had New Haven gone forward with certification and been sued by aggrieved minority test takers, the City would have been forced to defend tests that were presumptively invalid. And, as the CSB testimony of Hornick and others indicated, overcoming that presumption would have been no easy task. Id., at 153-156. Given Title VII’s preference for voluntary compliance, the court held, New Haven could lawfully discard the disputed exams even if the City had not definitively “pinpoint[ed]” the source of the disparity and “ha[d] not yet formulated a better selection method.” Id., at 156.

Respondents were no doubt conscious of race during their decisionmaking process, the court acknowledged, but this did not mean they had engaged in racially disparate treatment. The conclusion they had reached and the action thereupon taken were race neutral in this sense: “[A]ll the test results were discarded, no one was promoted, and firefighters of *620every race will have to participate in another selection process to be considered for promotion.” Id., at 158. New Haven’s action, which gave no individual a preference, “was ‘simply not analogous to a quota system or a minority set-aside where candidates, on the basis of their race, are not treated uniformly.’ ” Id., at 157 (quoting Hayden, 180 F. 3d, at 50). For these and other reasons, the court also rejected petitioners’ equal protection claim.

II

A

Title VII became effective in July 1965. Employers responded to the law by eliminating rules and practices that explicitly barred racial minorities from “white” jobs. But removing overtly race-based job classifications did not usher in genuinely equal opportunity. More subtle — and sometimes unconscious — forms of discrimination replaced once undisguised restrictions.

In Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424 (1971), this Court responded to that reality and supplied important guidance on Title VII’s mission and scope. Congress, the landmark decision recognized, aimed beyond “disparate treatment”; it targeted “disparate impact” as well. Title VII’s original text, it was plain to the Court, “proscribe [d] not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.” Id., at 431.2 Only by ig*621noring Griggs could one maintain that intentionally disparate treatment alone was Title VIPs “original, foundational prohibition,” and disparate impact a mere afterthought. Cf. ante, at 581.

Griggs addressed Duke Power Company’s policy that applicants for positions, save in the company’s labor department, be high school graduates and score satisfactorily on two professionally prepared aptitude tests. “[T]here was no showing of a discriminatory purpose in the adoption of the diploma and test requirements.” 401 U. S., at 428. The policy, however, “operated to render ineligible a markedly disproportionate number of [African-Americans].” Id., at 429. At the time of the litigation, in North Carolina, where the Duke Power plant was located, 34 percent of white males, but only 12 percent of African-American males, had high school diplomas. Id., at 430, n. 6. African-Americans also failed the aptitude tests at a significantly higher rate than whites. Ibid. Neither requirement had been “shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used.” Id., at 431.

The Court unanimously held that the company’s diploma and test requirements violated Title VII. “[T]o achieve equality of employment opportunities,” the Court comprehended, Congress “directed the thrust of the Act to the consequences of employment practices, not simply the motivation.” Id., at 429, 432. That meant “unnecessary barriers to employment” must fall, even if “neutral on their face” and “neutral in terms of intent.” Id., at 430, 431. “The touchstone” for determining whether a test or qualification meets Title VIPs measure, the Court said, is not “good intent or the absence of discriminatory intent”; it is “business necessity.” Id., at 431, 432. Matching procedure to substance, the Griggs Court observed, Congress “placed on the em*622ployer the burden of showing that any given requirement... ha[s] a manifest relationship to the employment in question.” Id., at 432.

In Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405 (1975), the Court, again without dissent, elaborated on Griggs. When an employment test “select[s] applicants for hire or promotion in a racial pattern significantly different from the pool of applicants,” the Court reiterated, the employer must demonstrate a “manifest relationship” between test and job. 422 U. S., at 425. Such a showing, the Court cautioned, does not necessarily mean the employer prevails: “[I]t remains open to the complaining party to show that other tests or selection devices, without a similarly undesirable racial effect, would also serve the employer’s legitimate interest in ‘efficient and trustworthy workmanship.’” Ibid.

Federal trial and appellate courts applied Griggs and Albemarle to disallow a host of hiring and promotion practices that “operate[d] as ‘built in headwinds’ for minority groups.” Griggs, 401 U. S., at 432. Practices discriminatory in effect, courts repeatedly emphasized, could be maintained only upon an employer’s showing of “an overriding and compelling business purpose.” Chrisner v. Complete Auto Transit, Inc., 645 F. 2d 1251, 1261, n. 9 (CA6 1981).3 That a prac*623tice served “legitimate management functions” did not, it was generally understood, suffice to establish business necessity. Williams v. Colorado Springs, Colo., School Dish, 641 F. 2d 835, 840-841 (CA10 1981) (internal quotation marks omitted). Among selection methods cast aside for lack of a “manifest relationship” to job performance were a number of written hiring and promotional examinations for firefighters.4

Moving in a different direction, in Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U. S. 642 (1989), a bare majority of this Court significantly modified the Griggs-Albemarle delineation of Title VIPs disparate-impact proscription. As to business necessity for a practice that disproportionately excludes members of minority groups, Wards Cove held, the employer bears only the burden of production, not the burden of persuasion. 490 U. S., at 659-660. And in place of the instruction that the challenged practice “must have a manifest relationship to the employment in question,” Griggs, 401 U. S., at 432, Wards Cove said that the practice would be permissible as long as it “serve[d], in a significant way, the legitimate employment goals of the employer,” 490 U. S., at 659.

*624In response to Wards Cove and “a number of [other] recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court that sharply cut back on the scope and effectiveness of [civil rights] laws,” Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1991. H. R. Rep. No. 102-40, pt. 2, p. 2 (1991). Among the 1991 alterations, Congress formally codified the disparate-impact component of Title VII. In so amending the statute, Congress made plain its intention to restore “the concepts of ‘business necessity’ and ‘job related’ enunciated by the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. . . . and in other Supreme Court decisions prior to Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio.” §3(2), 105 Stat. 1071. Once a complaining party demonstrates that an employment practice causes a disparate impact, amended Title VII states, the burden is on the employer “to demonstrate that the challenged practice is job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” 42 U. S. C. §2000e-2(k)(l)(A)(i). If the employer carries that substantial burden, the complainant may respond by identifying “an alternative employment practice” which the employer “refuses to adopt.” § 2000e-2(k)(l)(A)(ii), (C).

B

Neither Congress’ enactments nor this Court’s Title VII precedents (including the now-discredited decision in Wards Cove) offer even a hint of “conflict” between an employer’s obligations under the statute’s disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions. Cf. ante, at 580. Standing on an equal footing, these twin pillars of Title VII advance the same objectives: ending workplace discrimination and promoting genuinely equal opportunity. See McDonnell Douglas Cory. v. Green, 411 U. S. 792, 800 (1973).

Yet the Court today sets at odds the statute’s core directives. When an employer changes an employment practice in an effort to comply with Title VII’s disparate-impact pro*625vision, the Court reasons, it acts “because of race” — something Title VIPs disparate-treatment provision, see § 2000e-2(a)(1), generally forbids. Ante, at 579-580. This characterization of an employer’s compliance-directed action shows little attention to Congress’ design or to the Griggs line of cases Congress recognized as pathmarking.

“[O]ur task in interpreting separate provisions of a single Act is to give the Act the most harmonious, comprehensive meaning possible in light of the legislative policy and purpose.” Weinberger v. Hynson, Westcott & Dunning, Inc., 412 U. S. 609, 631-632 (1973) (internal quotation marks omitted). A particular phrase need not “extend to the outer limits of its definitional possibilities” if an incongruity would result. Dolan v. Postal Service, 546 U. S. 481, 486 (2006). Here, Title VII’s disparate-treatment and disparate-impact proscriptions must be read as complementary.

In codifying the Griggs and Albemarle instructions, Congress declared unambiguously that selection criteria operating to the disadvantage of minority group members can be retained only if justified by business necessity.5 In keeping with Congress’ design, employers who reject such criteria due to reasonable doubts about their reliability can hardly be held to have engaged in discrimination “because of” race. A reasonable endeavor to comply with the law and to ensure that qualified candidates of all races have a fair opportunity to compete is simply not what Congress meant to interdict. I would therefore hold that an employer who jettisons a selection device when its disproportionate racial impact becomes apparent does not violate Title VII’s disparate-treatment bar automatically or at all, subject to this key condition: The employer must have good cause to believe the *626device would not withstand examination for business necessity. Cf. Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U. S. 775, 806 (1998) (observing that it accords with “clear statutory policy” for employers “to prevent violations” and “make reasonable efforts to discharge their duty” under Title VII).

EEOC’s interpretative guidelines are corroborative. “[B]y the enactment of title VII,” the guidelines state, “Congress did not intend to expose those who comply with the Act to charges that they are violating the very statute they are seeking to implement.” 29 CFR § 1608.1(a) (2008). Recognizing EEOC’s “enforcement responsibility” under Title VII, we have previously accorded the Commission’s position respectful consideration. See, e.g., Albemarle, 422 U. S., at 431; Griggs, 401 U. S., at 434. Yet the Court today does not so much as mention EEOC’s counsel.

Our precedents defining the contours of Title VII’s disparate-treatment prohibition further confirm the absence of any intrastatutory discord. In Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara Cty., 480 U. S. 616 (1987), we upheld a municipal employer’s voluntary affirmative-action plan against a disparate-treatment challenge. Pursuant to the plan, the employer selected a woman for a road-dispatcher position, a job category traditionally regarded as “male.” A male applicant who had a slightly higher interview score brought suit under Title VII. This Court rejected his claim and approved the plan, which allowed consideration of gender as “one of numerous factors.” Id., at 638. Such consideration, we said, is “fully consistent with Title VII” because plans of that order can aid “in eliminating the vestiges of discrimination in the workplace.” Id., at 642.

This litigation does not involve affirmative action. But if the voluntary affirmative action at issue in Johnson does not discriminate within the meaning of Title VII, neither does an employer’s reasonable effort to comply with Title VII’s disparate-impact provision by refraining from action of doubtful consistency with business necessity.

*627c

To “reconcile” the supposed “conflict” between disparate treatment and disparate impact, the Court offers an enigmatic standard. Ante, at 580. Employers may attempt to comply with Title VII’s disparate-impact provision, the Court declares, only where there is a “strong basis in evidence” documenting the necessity of their action. Ante, at 583. The Court’s standard, drawn from inapposite equal protection precedents, is not elaborated. One is left to wonder what cases would meet the standard and why the Court is so sure cases of this genre do not.

1

In construing Title VII, I note preliminarily, equal protection doctrine is of limited utility. The Equal Protection Clause, this Court has held, prohibits only intentional discrimination; it does not have a disparate-impact component. See Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U. S. 256, 272 (1979); Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229, 239 (1976). Title VII, in contrast, aims to eliminate all forms of employment discrimination, unintentional as well as deliberate. Until today, cf. ante, at 584; ante, p. 594 (Scalia, J., concurring), this Court has never questioned the constitutionality of the disparate-impact component of Title VII, and for good reason. By instructing employers to avoid needlessly exclusionary selection processes, Title VIPs disparate-impact provision calls for a “race-neutral means to increase minority . . . participation” — something this Court’s equal protection precedents also encourage. See Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U. S. 200, 238 (1995) (quoting Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 507 (1989)). “The very radicalism of holding disparate impact doctrine unconstitutional as a matter of equal protection,” moreover, “suggests that only a very uncompromising court would issue such a decision.” Primus, Equal Protection and Dis*628parate Impact: Round Three, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 493, 585 (2003).

The cases from which the Court draws its strong-basis-in-evidence standard are particularly inapt; they concern the constitutionality of absolute racial preferences. See Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 277 (1986) (plurality opinion) (invalidating a school district’s plan to lay off nonminority teachers while retaining minority teachers with less seniority); Croson, 488 U. S., at 499-500 (rejecting a set-aside program for minority contractors that operated as “an unyielding racial quota”). An employer’s effort to avoid Title VII liability by repudiating a suspect selection method scarcely resembles those cases. Race was not merely a relevant consideration in Wygant and Croson; it was the decisive factor. Observance of Title VII’s disparate-impact provision, in contrast, calls for no racial preference, absolute or otherwise. The very purpose of the provision is to ensure that individuals are hired and promoted based on qualifications manifestly necessary to successful performance of the job in question, qualifications that do not screen out members of any race.6

2

The Court’s decision in this litigation underplays a dominant Title VII theme. This Court has repeatedly emphasized that the statute “should not be read to thwart” efforts at voluntary compliance. Johnson, 480 U. S., at 630. Such *629compliance, we have explained, is “the preferred means of achieving [Title VIPs] objectives.” Firefighters v. Cleveland, 478 U. S. 501, 515 (1986). See also Kolstad v. American Dental Assn., 527 U. S. 526, 545 (1999) (“Dissuading employers from [taking voluntary action] to prevent discrimination in the workplace is directly contrary to the purposes underlying Title VII.”); 29 CFR § 1608.1(e). The strong-basis-in-evidence standard, however, as barely described in general, and cavalierly applied in this litigation, makes voluntary compliance a hazardous venture.

As a result of today’s decision, an employer who discards a dubious selection process can anticipate costly disparate-treatment litigation in which its chances for success — even for surviving a summary-judgment motion — are highly problematic. Concern about exposure to disparate-impact liability, however well grounded, is insufficient to insulate an employer from attack. Instead, the employer must make a “strong” showing that (1) its selection method was “not job related and consistent with business necessity,” or (2) that it refused to adopt “an equally valid, less discriminatory alternative.” Ante, at 587. It is hard to see how these requirements differ from demanding that an employer establish “a provable, actual violation” against itself. Cf. ante, at 583. There is indeed a sharp conflict here, but it is not the false one the Court describes between Title VIPs core provisions. It is, instead, the discordance of the Court’s opinion with the voluntary compliance ideal. Cf. Wygant, 476 U. S., at 290 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“The imposition of a requirement that public employers make findings that they have engaged in illegal discrimination before they [act] would severely undermine public employers’ incentive to meet voluntarily their civil rights obligations.”).7

*6303

The Court’s additional justifications for announcing a strong-basis-in-evidence standard are unimpressive. First, discarding the results of tests, the Court suggests, calls for a heightened standard because it “upset[s] an employee’s legitimate expectation.” Ante, at 585. This rationale puts the cart before the horse. The legitimacy of an employee’s expectation depends on the legitimacy of the selection method. If an employer reasonably concludes that an exam fails to identify the most qualified individuals and needlessly shuts out a segment of the applicant pool, Title VII surely does not compel the employer to hire or promote based on the test, however unreliable it may be. Indeed, the statute’s prime objective is to prevent exclusionary practices from “operating] to ‘freeze’ the status quo.” Griggs, 401 U. S., at 430.

Second, the Court suggests, anything less than a strong-basis-in-evidence standard risks creating “a de facto quota system, in which ... an employer could discard test results . . . with the intent of obtaining the employer’s preferred racial balance.” Ante, at 581-582. Under a reasonableness standard, however, an employer could not cast aside a selection method based on a statistical disparity alone.8 The employer must have good cause to believe that the method *631screens out qualified applicants and would be difficult to justify as grounded in business necessity. Should an employer repeatedly reject test results, it would be fair, I agree, to infer that the employer is simply seeking a racially balanced outcome and is not genuinely endeavoring to comply with Title VII.

The Court stacks the deck further by denying respondents any chance to satisfy the newly announced strong-basis-in-evidence standard. When this Court formulates a new legal rule, the ordinary course is to remand and allow the lower courts to apply the rule in the first instance. See, e. g., Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 515 (2005); Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S. 273, 291 (1982). I see no good reason why the Court fails to follow that course today. Indeed, the sole basis for the Court’s peremptory ruling is the demonstrably false pretension that respondents showed “nothing more” than “a significant statistical disparity.” Ante, at 587; see supra, at 630, n. 8.9

*632III

A

Applying what I view as the proper standard to the record thus far made, I would hold that New Haven had ample cause to believe its selection process was flawed and not justified by business necessity. Judged by that standard, petitioners have not shown that New Haven’s failure to certify the exam results violated Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision.10

The City, all agree, “was faced with a prima facie ease of disparate-impact liability,” ante, at 586 (majority opinion): The pass rate for minority candidates was half the rate for nonminority candidates, and virtually no minority candidates would have been eligible for promotion had the exam results been certified. Alerted to this stark disparity, the CSB heard expert and lay testimony, presented at public hearings, in an endeavor to ascertain whether the exams were fair and consistent with business necessity. Its investigation revealed grave cause for concern about the exam process itself and the City’s failure to consider alternative selection devices.

Chief among the City’s problems was the very nature of the tests for promotion. In choosing to use written and oral exams with a 60/40 weighting, the City simply adhered to the union’s preference and apparently gave no consideration to whether the weighting was likely to identify the most qualified fire-officer candidates.11 There is strong reason to think it was not.

*633Relying heavily on written tests to select fire officers is a questionable practice, to say the least. Successful fire officers, the City’s description of the position makes clear, must have the “[a]bility to lead personnel effectively, maintain discipline, promote harmony, exercise sound judgment, and cooperate with other officials.” CA2 App. A432. These qualities are not well measured by written tests. Testifying before the CSB, Christopher Hornick, an exam-design expert with more than two decades of relevant experience, was emphatic on this point: Leadership skills, command presence, and the like “could have been identified and evaluated in a much more appropriate way.” Id., at A1042-A1043.

Hornick’s commonsense observation is mirrored in case law and in Title VII’s administrative guidelines. Courts have long criticized written firefighter promotion exams for being “more probative of the test taker’s ability to recall what a particular text stated on a given topic than of his firefighting or supervisory knowledge and abilities.” Vulcan Pioneers, Inc. v. New Jersey Dept. of Civil Serv., 625 F. Supp. 527, 539 (NJ 1985). A fire officer’s job, courts have *634observed, “involves complex behaviors, good interpersonal skills, the ability to make decisions under tremendous pressure, and a host of other abilities — none of which is easily measured by a written, multiple choice test.” Firefighters Inst. for Racial Equality v. St. Louis, 616 F. 2d 350, 359 (CA8 1980).12 Interpreting the Uniform Guidelines, EEOC and other federal agencies responsible for enforcing equal opportunity employment laws have similarly recognized that, as measures of “interpersonal relations” or “ability to function under danger (e. g., firefighters),” “[p]encil-andpaper tests . . . generally are not close enough approximations of work behaviors to show content validity.” 44 Fed. Reg. 12007 (1979). See also 29 CFR § 1607.15(C)(4).13

Given these unfavorable appraisals, it is unsurprising that most municipal employers do not evaluate their fire-officer candidates as New Haven does. Although comprehensive statistics are scarce, a 1996 study found that nearly two-thirds of surveyed municipalities used assessment centers *635(“simulations of the real world of work”) as part of their promotion processes. P. Lowry, A Survey of the Assessment Center Process in the Public Sector, 25 Public Personnel Management 307, 315 (1996). That figure represented a marked increase over the previous decade, see ibid., so the percentage today may well be even higher. Among municipalities still relying in part on written exams, the median weight assigned to them was 30 percent — half the weight given to New Haven’s written exam. Id., at 309.

Testimony before the CSB indicated that these alternative methods were both more reliable and notably less discriminatory in operation. According to Donald Day of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters, nearby Bridgeport saw less skewed results after switching to a selection process that placed primary weight on an oral exam. CA2 App. A830-A832; see supra, at 614. And Hornick described assessment centers as “demonstrat[ing] dramatically less adverse impacts” than written exams. CA2 App. A1040.14 Considering the prevalence of these proven alternatives, New Haven was poorly positioned to argue that promotions based on its outmoded and exclusionary selection process qualified as a business necessity. Cf. Robinson v. Lorillard Corp., 444 F. 2d 791, 798, n. 7 (CA4 1971) (“It should go without saying that a practice is hardly ‘necessary’ if an alternative practice better effectuates its intended purpose or is equally effective but less discriminatory.”).15

*636Ignoring the conceptual and other defects in New Haven’s selection process, the Court describes the exams as “painstaking[ly]” developed to test “relevant” material and on that basis finds no substantial risk of disparate-impact liability. See ante, at 588. Perhaps such reasoning would have sufficed under Wards Cove, which permitted exclusionary practices as long as they advanced an employer’s “legitimate” goals. 490 U. S., at 659. But Congress repudiated Wards Cove and reinstated the “business necessity” rule attended by a “manifest relationship” requirement. See Griggs, 401 U. S., at 431-432. See also supra, at 624. Like the chess player who tries to win by sweeping the opponent’s pieces off the table, the Court simply shuts from its sight the formidable obstacles New Haven would have faced in defending against a disparate-impact suit. See Lanning v. Southeastern Pa. Transp. Auth., 181 F. 3d 478, 489 (CA3 1999) (“Judicial application of a standard focusing solely on whether the qualities measured by an . . . exam bear some relationship to the job in question would impermissibly write out the business necessity prong of the Act’s chosen standard.”).

*637That IOS representative Chad Legel and his team may-have been diligent in designing the exams says little about the exams’ suitability for selecting fire officers. IOS worked within the City’s constraints. Legel never discussed with the City the propriety of the 60/40 weighting and “was not asked to consider the possibility of an assessment center.” CA2 App. A522. See also id., at A467.' The IOS exams, Legel admitted, had not even attempted to assess “command presence”: “[Y]ou would probably be better off with an assessment center if you cared to measure that.” Id., at A521. Cf. Boston Chapter, NAACP, Inc. v. Beecher, 504 F. 2d 1017, 1021-1022 (CA1 1974) (“A test fashioned from materials pertaining to the job . . . superficially may seem job-related. But what is at issue is whether it demonstrably selects people who will perform better the required on-the-job behaviors.”).

In addition to the highly questionable character of the exams and the neglect of available alternatives, the City had other reasons to worry about its vulnerability to disparate-impact liability. Under the City’s ground rules, IOS was not allowed to show the exams to anyone in the New Haven Fire Department prior to their administration. This “precluded [IOS] from being able to engage in [its] normal subject matter expert review process” — something Legel described as “very critical.” CA2 App. A477, A506. As a result, some of the exam questions were confusing or irrelevant, and the exams may have overtested some subject-matter areas while missing others. See, e. g., id., at A1034-A1035, A1051. Testimony before the CSB also raised questions concerning unequal access to study materials, see id., at A857-A861, and the potential bias introduced by relying principally on job analyses from nonminority fire officers to develop the exams, see id., at A1063-A1064.16 See also supra, at 613-614, 617.

*638The Court criticizes New Haven for failing to obtain a “technical report” from IOS, which, the Court maintains, would have provided “detailed information to establish the validity of the exams.” Ante, at 589. The record does not substantiate this assertion. As Legel testified during his deposition, the technical report merely summarized “the steps that [IOS] took methodologically speaking,” and would not have established the exams’ reliability. CA2 App. A461. See also id., at A462 (the report “doesn’t say anything that other documents that already existed wouldn’t say”).

In sum, the record solidly establishes that the City had good cause to fear disparate-impact liability. Moreover, the Court supplies no tenable explanation why the evidence of the tests’ multiple deficiencies does not create at least a triable issue under a strong-basis-in-evidence standard.

B

Concurring in the Court’s opinion, Justice Alito asserts that summary judgment for respondents would be improper even if the City had good cause for its noncertification decision. A reasonable jury, he maintains, could have found that respondents were not actually motivated by concern about disparate-impact litigation, but instead sought only “to placate a politically important [African-American] constitu*639ency.” Ante, at 597. As earlier noted, I would not oppose a remand for further proceedings fair to both sides. See supra, at 632, n. 10. It is the Court that has chosen to short circuit this litigation based on its pretension that the City has shown, and can show, nothing more than a statistical disparity. See supra, at 630, n. 8, 631. Justice Alito compounds the Court’s error.

Offering a truncated synopsis of the many hours of deliberations undertaken by the CSB, Justice Alito finds evidence suggesting that respondents’ stated desire to comply with Title YII was insincere, a mere “pretext” for discrimination against white firefighters. Ante, at 596-597. In support of his assertion, Justice Alito recounts at length the alleged machinations of Rev. Boise Kimber (a local political activist), Mayor John DeStefano, and certain members of the mayor’s staff. See ante, at 598-604.

Most of the allegations Justice Alito repeats are drawn from petitioners’ statement of facts they deem undisputed, a statement displaying an adversarial zeal not uncommonly found in such presentations.17 What cannot credibly be de*640nied, however, is that the decision against certification of the exams was made neither by Kimber nor by the mayor and his staff. The relevant decision was made by the CSB, an unelected, politically insulated body. It is striking that Justice Alito’s concurrence says hardly a word about the CSB itself, perhaps because there is scant evidence that its motivation was anything other than to comply with Title VIPs disparate-impact provision. Notably, petitioners did not even seek to take depositions of the two commissioners who voted against certification. Both submitted uncontested affidavits declaring unequivocally that their votes were “based solely on [their] good faith belief that certification” would have discriminated against minority candidates in violation of federal law. CA2 App. A1605, A1611.

Justice Alito discounts these sworn statements, suggesting that the CSB’s deliberations were tainted by the preferences of Kimber and City officials, whether or not the CSB itself was aware of the taint. Kimber and City officials, Justice Alito speculates, decided early on to oppose certification and then “engineered” a skewed presentation to the CSB to achieve their preferred outcome. Ante, at 606.

As an initial matter, Justice Alito exaggerates the influence of these actors. The CSB, the record reveals, designed and conducted an inclusive decisionmaking process, in which it heard from numerous individuals on both sides of the certification question. See, e.g., CA2 App. A1090. Kimber and others no doubt used strong words to urge the CSB not to certify the exam results, but the CSB received “pressure” from supporters of certification as well as opponents. Cf. ante, at 600. Petitioners, for example, engaged counsel to speak on their behalf before the CSB. Their counsel did not mince words: “[I]f you discard these results,” she warned, “you will get sued. You will force the taxpay*641ers of the city of New Haven into protracted litigation.” CA2 App. A816. See also id., at A788.

The local firefighters union — an organization required by law to represent all the City’s firefighters — was similarly outspoken in favor of certification. Discarding the test results, the union’s president told the CSB, would be “totally ridiculous.” Id., at A806. He insisted, inaccurately, that the City was not at risk of disparate-impact liability because the exams were administered pursuant to “a collective bargaining agreement.” Id., at A1137. Cf. supra, at 632-633, n. 11. Never mentioned by Justice Alito in his attempt to show testing expert Christopher Hornick’s alliance with the City, ante, at 603-604, the CSB solicited Hornick’s testimony at the union’s suggestion, not the City’s. CA2 App. A1128. Hornick’s cogent testimony raised substantial doubts about the exams’ reliability. See supra, at 615-616.18

There is scant cause to suspect that maneuvering or overheated rhetoric, from either side, prevented the CSB from evenhandedly assessing the reliability of the exams and rendering an independent, good-faith decision on certification. Justice Alito acknowledges that the CSB had little patience for Kimber’s antics. Ante, at 600-602.19 As to petitioners, Chairman Segaloff — who voted to certify the exam *642results — dismissed the threats made by their counsel as unhelpful and needlessly “inflammatory.” CA2 App. A821. Regarding the views expressed by City officials, the CSB made clear that they were entitled to no special weight. Id., at A1080.20

In any event, Justice Alito’s analysis contains a more fundamental flaw: It equates political considerations with unlawful discrimination. As Justice Alito sees it, if the mayor and his staff were motivated by their desire “to placate a . . . racial constituency,” ante, at 597, then they engaged in unlawful discrimination against petitioners. But Justice Alito fails to ask a vital question: “[P]lacate” how? That political officials would have politics in mind is hardly extraordinary, and there are many ways in which a politician can attempt to win over a constituency — including a racial constituency — without engaging in unlawful discrimination. As courts have recognized, “[politicians routinely respond to bad press . . . , but it is not a violation of Title VII to take advantage of a situation to gain political favor.” Henry v. Jones, 507 F. 3d 558, 567 (CA7 2007).

The real issue, then, is not whether the mayor and his staff were politically motivated; it is whether their attempt to score political points was legitimate (1 e., nondiscriminatory). Were they seeking to exclude white firefighters from promotion (unlikely, as a fair test would undoubtedly result in the addition of white firefighters to the officer ranks), or did they realize, at least belatedly, that their tests could be toppled in a disparate-impact suit? In the latter case, *643there is no disparate-treatment violation. Justice Alito, I recognize, would disagree. In his view, an employer^ action to avoid Title VII disparate-impact liability qualifies as a presumptively improper race-based employment decision. See ante, at 597. I reject that construction of Title VII. See supra, at 625-627. As I see it, when employers endeavor to avoid exposure to disparate-impact liability, they do not thereby encounter liability for disparate treatment.

Applying this understanding of Title VII, supported by Griggs and the long line of decisions following Griggs, see supra, at 623-624, and nn. 3-4, the District Court found no genuine dispute of material fact. That court noted, particularly, the guidance furnished by Second Circuit precedent. See supra, at 619. Petitioners’ allegations that City officials took account of politics, the District Court determined, simply “d[id] not suffice” to create an inference of unlawful discrimination. 554 F. Supp. 2d, at 160, n. 12. The noncertification decision, even if undertaken “in a political context,” reflected a legitimate “intent not to implement a promotional process based on testing results that had an adverse impact.” Id., at 158, 160. Indeed, the District Court perceived “a total absence of any evidence of discriminatory animus towards [petitioners].” Id., at 158. See also id., at 162 (“Nothing in the record in this case suggests that the City defendants or CSB acted ‘because of’ discriminatory animus toward [petitioners] or other non-minority applicants for promotion.”). Perhaps the District Court could have been more expansive in its discussion of these issues, but its conclusions appear entirely consistent with the record before it.21

*644It is indeed regrettable that the City’s noncertification decision would have required all candidates to go through another selection process. But it would have been more regrettable to rely on'flawed exams to shut out candidates who may well have the command presence and other qualities needed to excel as fire officers. Yet that is the choice the Court makes today. It is a choice that breaks the promise of Griggs that groups long denied equal opportunity would not be held back by tests “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.” 401 U. S., at 431.

* * *

These cases present an unfortunate situation, one New Haven might well have avoided had it utilized a better selection process in the first place. But what this litigation does not present is race-based discrimination in violation of Title VIL I dissent from the Court’s judgment, which rests on the false premise that respondents showed “a significant statistical disparity,” but “nothing more.” See ante, at 587.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SRINIVASAN.

SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judge:

From 1990 to 1992, the State Department had in place a hiring plan aimed to increase racial diversity among the officer corps in the United States Foreign Service. William Shea, a white Foreign Service Officer, brings suit alleging that the hiring plan violated Title VII. Although Shea challenges a plan that ceased to exist over twenty years ago, he joined the Foreign Service during the two years the plan was in effect. He alleges that, because of the plan, he entered the Foreign Service at a lower level than would have been the case had he been a minority applicant.

The district court viewed Shea’s claim to be controlled by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, California, 480 U.S. 616, 107 S.Ct. 1442, 94 L.Ed.2d 615 (1987), and United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO-CLC v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 99 S.Ct. 2721, 61 L.Ed.2d 480 (1979). Those decisions upheld employers’ affirmative action plans against Title VII challenges. The district court, following Johnson and Weber, granted summary judgment in favor of the State Department. We agree with the district court and affirm its judgment.

I.

A.

The United States Foreign Service, a branch of the United States Department of State, works through its Foreign Service Officers to “advocate American foreign policy, protect American citizens, and promote American interests throughout the world.” Taylor v. Rice, 451 F.3d 898, 900 (D.C.Cir.2006). Foreign Service Officers “perform traditional diplomatic responsibilities, including trade promotion, political and economic reporting, and consular services and protection.” Id.

*47In 1990, Shea applied for an entry-level Foreign Service Officer position. At the time, the Foreign Service career ladder consisted of six pay grades, ranging from FS-06 (entry level) to FS-01 (upper level), with the Senior Foreign Service (SFS) a step above FS-01. The Department generally filled vacancies at more senior ranks through internal promotions rather than external hires. Applicants from outside the agency thus ordinarily entered the Officer corps only at the junior levels (FS-04, -05 and -06 levels). In May 1992, Shea joined the Foreign Service at the FS-05 level.

B.

In the years preceding Shea’s application to the Foreign Service, the State Department faced significant scrutiny about the lack of diversity of the Foreign Service Officer corps. In 1985, Congress perceived an underrepresentation of minorities among Foreign Service Officers. Congress therefore enacted legislation directing the Department to “develop ... a plan designed to increase significantly the number of members of minority groups ... in the Foreign Service,” with a “particular emphasis on achieving significant increases in the numbers of minority group members ... in the mid-levels of the Foreign Service,” the FS-02 and -03 levels. Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1986 and 1987, Pub.L. No. 99-93, § 152(a), (b), 99 Stat. 405, 428 (1985).

Two years later, Congress remained unsatisfied. Concluding that the State Department “ha[d] not been successful in [its] efforts ... to recruit and retain members of minority groups,” Congress instructed the Department to “substantially increase [its] efforts” to ensure that the “Foreign Service becomes truly representative of the American people throughout all levels of the Foreign Service.” Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989, Pub.L. No. 100-204, § 183(a), (a)(1), (b)(1), 101 Stat. 1331, 1364 (1987). Congress specifically directed the Department to “ensure that those [efforts] effectively address the need to promote increased numbers of qualified ... members of minority groups into the senior levels of the Foreign Service.” Id. § 183(b)(2).

Congress did not stand alone in raising concerns about the diversity of the Foreign Service Officer corps. In 1989, the General Accounting Office (now known as the Governmental Accountability Office) released a report entitled “State Department: Minorities and Women Are Underrepresented in the Foreign Service.” The 1989 GAO Report evaluated the Department’s existing efforts, finding that, while “[p]rogress ha[dj been mixed” in increasing diversity,

[m]inorities ... were still substantially underrepresented when compared with civilian labor force data that the EEOC ha[d] issued to measure federal agencies ....

In mid-level ranks of the officer corps, minority male representation ha[d] increased, but minority and white women ha[d] made less progress. In State’s Senior Foreign Service positions, under-representation of minorities and white women [wa]s still pervasive.

U.S. Gen. Accounting Office, State Department: Minorities and Women Are Underrepresented in the Foreign Service 15 (1989) (1989 GAO Report).

The 1989 GAO Report compared the Department’s 1987 minority workforce with the racial breakdown of the American population possessing the skills required for Foreign Service employment. That comparison indicated that the Department generally fell short of “full representation”' — the level at which a minority group would make up the same proportion of the workforce as its proportion of the American population possessing the relevant *48skiUs-at mid- and senior-level Foreign Service Officer positions, as follows: for women of each defined minority group at the SFS, FS-01, -02, and -03 levels; black, Native American and native Alaskan men at the SFS level; Hispanic men at the SFS and FS-01 levels; and Asian and Pacific Islander men at the SFS, FS-01, -02, and -03 levels.

The Civil Service Subcommittee of the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service convened hearings focusing on the 1989 GAO Report’s findings and on the results of two other studies — the Bremer Study Group Report (commissioned by the Secretary of State on his own initiative) and the Thomas Commission Report (mandated by Congress as part of the 1988-1989 Foreign Relations Authorization Act). Representative Gerry Sikorski, the Subcommittee’s Chairman, interpreted those two studies to “disclose[ ] major problems of discrimination against ... minorities in the Foreign Service.” Underrepresentation of Women and Minorities in the Foreign Service: Hearing Before the Sub-comm. on the Civil Serv. of the H. Comm, on Post Office & Civil Serv., 101st Cong. 3 (1989) (1989 Subcomm. Hearing). Those studies, he concluded, revealed that “management of the U.S. Foreign Service [was] seriously flawed.” The Department of State in the 21st Century: Joint Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Int’l Ops. of the H. Comm, on Foreign Affairs & the Sub-comm. on the Civil Serv. of the H. Comm, on Post Office & Civil Serv., 101st Cong. 6 (1989) (1989 Joint Hearing).

As of 1989, minorities remained underrepresented in Foreign Service Officer roles. Id. And that was after years of concerns voiced by Congress and repeated warnings from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “that the State Department ha[d] not had an effective ... plan or program for overcoming the underrepresentation [of minorities] in the Foreign Service.” U.S. Gen. Accounting Office, Testimony: Underrepre-sentation of Minorities and Women in the Foreign Service, Statement of Joseph Kelley, Director of Security and International Relations Issues, National Security and International Affairs Division, Before the Subcommittee on Civil Service, Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, United States House of Representatives 1 (1989). The Department undertook various measures in response, including creating a special hiring path for minorities into the Foreign Service’s mid- and upper-level ranks — the affirmative action plan in issue here.

C.

At the time of Shea’s entry into the Foreign Service, the State Department operated two distinct programs that enabled applicants to bypass the Department’s usual preference for internal promotions and allowed the direct hiring of outside applicants into mid- and upper-level (FS-01, - 02 and -03) positions. One program, the Career Candidate Program (CCP), was race-neutral. The other program, the 1990-92 Affirmative Action Plan (1990-92 Plan), targeted minority applicants.

Under the CCP, the Department accepted certain applications from outside candidates for FS-01, -02, and -03 positions. But the Department, in accordance with its general preference for filling vacancies through internal promotions, could hire an otherwise viable outside applicant through the CCP only if the Department issued a “certificate of need” attesting that no internal candidates could fill that vacancy. The Department would then consider the outside applicant consistent with its typical hiring procedures. In the absence of a certificate of need, no outside candidate could receive an offer of employment through the CCP.

*49Under the race-conscious 1990-92 Plan, the Department provided a special path for minorities seeking direct placement as outside hires into the FS-01, -02, and -03 ranks. The 1990-92 Plan gave one — and only one — advantage to minority applicants: an automatic waiver of the CCP’s certificate-of-need requirement for “American Indians, Alaska Native[s], Asians and Pacific Islanders, Blacks, and Hispanics.” U.S. Dep’t of State, Foreign Service Mid-Level Hiring Program Highlights 1 (1989). Apart from the certificate-of-need waiver at the threshold stage, the 1990-92 Plan granted no benefits to minorities in the course of the hiring process. That process was rigorous: The “vast majority” of minority candidates applying through the 199092 Plan “were eliminated from competition at the preliminary review stage.” Id.

D.

In 2001, Shea filed an administrative grievance with the State Department. Among other claims, he argued that he started at a lower pay grade by virtue of the 1990-92 Plan’s preferential treatment of minority applicants, infringing his rights under Title VII as well as the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Foreign Service Grievance Board dismissed his complaint for lack of jurisdiction, and Shea then filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Shea’s case initially traveled back and forth between the district court and this court on the question of whether his Title VII and equal protection claims had been timely filed. (As to the remaining claims, Shea did not appeal their dismissal.) See Shea v. Kerry, 961 F.Supp.2d 17, 22-25 (D.D.C.2013). Ultimately, after Congress enacted the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, Pub.L. No. 111-2, 123 Stat. 5, the district court found that Shea’s Title VII claims were timely under the Ledbetter Act but that his equal protection claims were untimely. See id. at 24, 29 & n. 3.

Proceeding to the merits, the district court granted summary judgment to the State Department. Id. at 55. The court first determined that the Supreme Court’s Title VII affirmative action decisions in Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 99 S.Ct. 2721, and Johnson, 480 U.S. 616, 107 S.Ct. 1442, controlled the analysis. Those decisions, the district court explained, called for application of the three-step burden-shifting framework articulated by the Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973). Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 27-29.

At the first step, the district court concluded that Shea had established a prima facie case of discrimination in violation of Title VII. Id. at 31-33. Turning to the second step, the court found that the Department had proffered evidence that, if accepted as true, permitted the conclusion that the Department had acted pursuant to a lawful affirmative action plan. Id. at 33-44: Finally, at the third step, the district court considered whether Shea had shown that the affirmative action plan was, in fact, unlawful. The court rejected Shea’s proffer of lay statistical evidence to that end, and thus concluded that he had failed to raise any genuine issue concerning the validity of the Department’s affirmative action plan. The court therefore granted summary judgment in favor of the Department. Id. at 55.

II.

We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment on Shea’s Title VII claim. Holcomb v. Powell, 433 F.3d 889, 895 (D.C.Cir.2006). Before addressing the merits of that claim, we first assure ourselves of Shea’s standing to bring it. Although the Department raises no challenge to his standing, “it is *50well established that the court has an independent obligation to assure that standing exists, regardless of whether it is challenged by any of the parties.” Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 499, 129 S.Ct. 1142, 173 L.Ed.2d 1 (2009).

To demonstrate his standing, Shea must show, inter alia, that he suffered an injury in fact that is both “concrete and particularized” and “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U..S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (quotation marks omitted). In the context of an employment discrimination claim, a plaintiff may claim an injury in fact from the purported denial of the ability to compete on an equal footing against other candidates for a job. See Ne. Fla. Chapter of the Associated Gen. Contractors of Am. v. City of Jacksonville, Fla., 508 U.S. 656, 666, 113 S.Ct. 2297, 124 L.Ed.2d 586 (1993); Cerrato v. S.F. Cmty. Coll. Dist., 26 F.3d 968, 976 (9th Cir.1994). Because the injury lies in the denial of an equal opportunity to compete, not the denial of the job itself, we do not inquire into the plaintiffs qualifications (or lack thereof) when assessing standing. See Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 280-81 & n. 14, 98 S.Ct. 2733, 57 L.Ed.2d 750 (1978).

Shea alleges that the 1990-92 Plan denied him the opportunity to compete on an equal basis by extending a preference to minority candidates that was unavailable to him: the ability to gain consideration for entry to a mid-level position without any certificate of need. Shea could have sought direct mid-level placement through the race-neutral CCP program, however. He did not do so, instead applying only for an entry-level FS-05 position. There is thus a question whether Shea suffered an actual or imminent injury as a result of the 1990-92 Plan, or whether his injury was merely hypothetical.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 123 S.Ct. 2411, 156 L.Ed.2d 257 (2003), found the existence of standing in parallel circumstances. In Gratz, one of the plaintiffs, Patrick Hamacher, sought to challenge the University of Michigan’s consideration of race in its undergraduate transfer admissions. At the time of the suit, Hamacher had yet to apply to transfer to Michigan. Indeed, the Court’s opinion indicated that he would not do so as long as Michigan’s race-conscious admissions program remained in place: Hamacher instead declared that he “intend[ed] to transfer to the University of Michigan when [it] cease[d] the use of race as an admissions preference.” Id. at 261, 123 S.Ct. 2411 (emphasis added). The Supreme Court sua sponte questioned Ha-macher’s standing to bring his challenge, ultimately concluding that he had shown an injury in fact. The Court reasoned that, because of Hamacher’s stated intent to transfer should Michigan change its policy, he had established standing. Id. at 261-62, 123 S.Ct. 2411.

Gratz controls our inquiry. Like Ha-macher, Shea alleges that he possessed an intent to apply to the position in question, i.e., a mid-level position. Pl.’s Decl. in Supp. of Pl.’s Surreply at 3-4 (filed Dec. 14, 2012). If the mid-levels had been open to him for equal consideration on a race-neutral footing, he would have applied to the mid-levels instead of the entry-level. Thus, like Hamacher, Shea stood “able and ready to apply [to the mid-levels] should the [State Department] cease to use race” as a factor in mid-level hiring. Id. (quotation marks omitted). By choosing not to apply because the Department was considering race during the time of his application process, Shea did exactly what Ha-macher alleged he would do: refuse to apply through the race-conscious program unless and until that program’s use of race-conscious preferences ceased. As a *51result, Shea, like Hamaeher, has standing to challenge the Department’s affirmative action plan notwithstanding his failure to apply for a mid-level position through the CCP program.

III.

Title VII prohibits an employer from “discriminat[ing] against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of’ inter alia, “such individual’s race.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(l). The statute protects both minorities and non-minorities — the latter against “reverse discrimination.” See Mastro v. Potomac Elec. Power Co., 447 F.3d 843, 851 (D.C.Cir.2006). Here, Shea alleges that the State Department’s 1990-92 Plan constituted impermissible reverse discrimination in violation of Title VII.

A.

At the outset, we consider the governing framework for resolving Shea’s reverse-discrimination claim. For nearly thirty years, we have examined Title VII challenges to affirmative action programs under the standards set forth by the Supreme Court in United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO-CLC v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 99 S.Ct. 2721, 61 L.Ed.2d 480 (1979), and Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, California, 480 U.S. 616, 107 S.Ct. 1442, 94 L.Ed.2d 615 (1987). Shea argues that those standards have been displaced by the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557, 129 S.Ct. 2658, 174 L.Ed.2d 490 (2009), such that Johnson and Weber no longer guide the analysis of reverse-discrimination claims under Title VII. We are unpersuaded.

In Weber, the Supreme Court for the first time considered a Title VII challenge to an employei*’s affirmative action plan. As of 1974, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. had an “almost exclusively white craftwork force[],” with black employees making up only 1.83% of the company’s skilled craftworkers at its Gramercy, Louisiana, plant, even though the workforce in the area surrounding that plant was roughly 39% black. Weber, 443 U.S. at 198-99, 99 S.Ct. 2721. As part of a collective-bargaining agreement, Kaiser promised to implement “an affirmative action plan designed to eliminate [that] conspicuous racial imbalance[ ].” Id. at 198, 99 S.Ct. 2721. The company established job-training programs to teach both black and white employees the necessary skills for promotion to craftworker positions. Id. at 198-99, 99 S.Ct. 2721. Selection of trainees for the program would be made on the basis of seniority, but “with the proviso that at least 50% of the new trainees were to be black until the percentage of black skilled craftworkers in the Gramercy plant approximated the percentage of blacks in the local labor force.” Id. at 199, 99 S.Ct. 2721. A white unskilled production worker from the plant sued, arguing that Title VII prohibited all race-conscious employer actions. Id. at 199, 201, 99 S.Ct. 2721.

The Supreme Court disagreed and upheld Kaiser’s affirmative action plan. The Court declined to “define in detail the line of demarcation between permissible and impermissible affirmative action plans,’.’ but concluded that Kaiser’s plan fell “on the permissible side of the line.” Id. at 208, 99 S.Ct. 2721. The trainee-selection plan, the Court approvingly noted, aimed to “break down old patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy” and “open employment opportunities for [black workers] in occupations which have been traditionally closed to them.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). The Court set out the considerations that caused it to uphold the company’s plan as follows:

[T]he plan does not unnecessarily trammel the interests of the white employees. The plan does not require the *52discharge of white workers and their replacement with new black hirees. Nor does the plan create an absolute bar to the advancement of white employees; half of those trained in the program will be white. Moreover, the plan is a temporary measure; it is not intended to maintain racial balance, but simply to eliminate a manifest racial imbalance. Preferential selection of craft trainees at the Gramercy plant will end as soon as the percentage of black skilled craftworkers in the Gram-ercy plant approximates the percentage of blacks in the local labor force. Id. at 208-09, 99 S.Ct. 2721 (citation omitted). For those reasons, the plan fell “within the area of discretion left by Title VII to the private sector voluntarily to adopt affirmative action plans designed to eliminate conspicuous racial imbalance in traditionally segregated job categories.” Id. at 209, 99 S.Ct. 2721.

2.

Nine years later, in Johnson, the Court again rejected a Title VII challenge to an employer’s affirmative action program. The case arose from the efforts of Santa Clara County, California, to increase diversity in portions of its workforce. The County sought to address a striking gender imbalance in certain positions: Women constituted 36.4% of the labor market in the area, but “none of [the County’s] 238 Skilled Craft Worker positions was held by a woman.” Johnson, 480 U.S. at 621, 107 S.Ct. 1442. The County implemented a voluntary affirmative action plan with a stated “long-term goal” to “attain a work force whose composition reflected the proportion of minorities and women in the area labor force.” Id. at 621-22, 107 S.Ct. 1442. The County’s plan “authorized the consideration of ethnicity or sex as a factor when evaluating qualified candidates for jobs in which members of such groups were poorly represented,” but it did not set aside a specific number of hiring slots for women or racial minorities. Id. at 622, 107 S.Ct. 1442.

In upholding the County’s plan, the Court determined that the analysis should follow the three-step burden-shifting framework set forth in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973). Under that framework:

Once a plaintiff establishes a prima facie case that race or sex has been taken into account in an employer’s employment decision [step one], the burden shifts to the employer to articulate a nondiscriminatory rationale for its decision [step two]. The existence of an affirmative action plan provides such a rationale. If such a plan is articulated as the basis for the employer’s decision, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to prove that the employer’s justification is pretextual and the plan is invalid [step three].

Johnson, 480 U.S. at 626, 107 S.Ct. 1442. Application of that framework, the Johnson Court emphasized, “does not mean ... that reliance on an affirmative action plan is to be treated as an affirmative defense requiring the employer to carry the burden of proving the validity of the plan. The burden of proving its invalidity remains on the plaintiff.” Id. at 627, 107 S.Ct. 1442.

The Johnson Court explained that it would “be guided by [its] decision in Weber.” Id. In Weber, the Court noted, it had blessed an affirmative action plan that (i) sought to “eliminate manifest racial imbalances in traditionally segregated job categories”; and (ii) did not “unnecessarily trammel the interests of white employees.” Id. at 628-30, 107 S.Ct. 1442. The Court found the requisite “manifest imbalance” to exist in Johnson in light of the complete absence of women in the positions in ques*53tion. Id. at 636, 107 S.Ct. 1442. The Court further determined that the County’s plan did not “unnecessarily trammel[ ] the rights of male employees” based on a number of factors (without ascribing weight or rank to any single one). Id. at 637-40, 107 S.Ct. 1442. In particular, the plan imposed “goals,” not “quotas.” Id. at 638, 107 S.Ct. 1442. The plan worked such that “[to]o persons [were] automatically excluded from consideration; all [were] able to have their qualifications weighed against those of other applicants,’( with gender considered only as a “plus.” Id. The plan did not abrogate any “absolute entitlement” of male employees, as it operated only in the context of promotions, the denial of which would “unsettle[ ] no legitimate, firmly rooted expectation[s].” Id. And the plan was temporary, in that it “was intended to attain a balanced work force, not to maintain one.” Id. at 639, 107 S.Ct. 1442.

For nearly three decades, Johnson has guided courts — including ours — in the analysis of Title VII claims alleging unlawful reverse discrimination. See, e.g., Hammon v. Barry (Hammon II), 826 F.2d 73 (D.C.Cir.1987); see also Petitti v. New England Tel. & Tel. Co., 909 F.2d 28 (1st Cir.1990); Taxman v. Bd. of Educ., 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir.1996) (en banc); Smith v. Va. Commonwealth Univ., 84 F.3d 672 (4th Cir.1996) (en banc); Edwards v. City of Houston, 37 F.3d 1097 (5th Cir.1994); Janowiak v. Corporate City of S. Bend, 836 F.2d 1034 (7th Cir.1988); Tharp v. Iowa Dep’t of Corr., 68 F.3d 223 (8th Cir.1995); Doe v. Kamehameha Sch./Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate, 470 F.3d 827 (9th Cir.2006) (en banc); Cunico v. Pueblo Sch. Dist. No. 60, 917 F.2d 431 (10th Cir.1990); In re Birmingham Reverse Discrimination Emp’t Litig., 20 F.3d 1525 (11th Cir.1994).

3.

In 2009, the Supreme Court decided Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557, 129 S.Ct. 2658. In Ricci, the Court considered the City of New Haven’s actions in the aftermath of the City’s administration of a firefighter promotional examination. The results of the exam showed a statistical racial disparity: White candidates had outperformed minority candidates. Id. at 562, 129 S.Ct. 2658. Some firefighters threatened to bring a discrimination lawsuit if the City relied qn the test in making promotions. Id. The City responded by throwing out the test results. A group of white and Hispanic firefighters sued the City under Title VII, claiming that, by discarding the test, the City had engaged in unlawful reverse discrimination against them. Id. at 562-63, 129 S.Ct. 2658.

The Supreme Court ruled in the firefighters’ favor. The Court understood that the City’s “objective” in discarding the tests was to “avoid[ ] disparate-impact liability” under Title VII. Id. at 579, 129 S.Ct. 2658. But the Court concluded that, by rejecting the results of the promotional test “because of the statistical disparity based on race,” the City had engaged in “express, race-based decisionmaking.” Id. The Court held that “race-based action like the City’s in this case is impermissible under Title VII unless the employer can demonstrate a strong basis in evidence that, had it not taken the action, it would have been liable under” Title VII’s disparate-impact prohibition. Id. at 563, 129 S.Ct. 2658; see id. at 585, 129 S.Ct. 2658. That is, the Court held that the City could not invalidate the test results based on the race of the highest scorers for the asserted purpose of avoiding a disparate-impact lawsuit, unless the City had a strong basis in evidence to believe that it would be found liable in such a suit. The City could *54not meet that burden. Id. at 592, 129 S.Ct. 2658.

Shea argues that Ricci upends Johnson and Weber such that those earlier decisions no longer guide our analysis here. Under Johnson and Weber, we would first assess the sufficiency of Shea’s prima facie case, then turn to the State Department’s proffer of a valid affirmative action plan, and finally examine Shea’s efforts to demonstrate the invalidity of that plan. See Johnson, 480 U.S. at 626, 107 S.Ct. 1442. Throughout, Shea would retain the burden of proving the invalidity of the Department’s 1990-92 Plan. Id. at 627, 107 S.Ct. 1442. Ricci changed all of this, Shea submits: After Ricci, Shea argues, we must jettison Johnson and Weber’s framework and instead ask whether the State Department can show “a strong basis in evidence that, had it not [instituted an affirmative action plan], it would have been liable” for discrimination under Title VII. Ricci, 557 U.S. at 563, 129 S.Ct. 2658 (emphasis added). And, if the Department proves unable to put forth the requisite “strong basis in evidence” in support of that showing, Shea contends, the Department would be liable under Title VII for impermissible reverse discrimination.

The Department initially argues that Shea forfeited any argument based on Ricci by failing to present that argument to the district court. We disagree. Although forfeiture principles apply to new arguments raised for the first time on appeal, see Potter v. District of Columbia, 558 F.3d 542, 547 (D.C.Cir.2009), Shea’s argument has been consistent throughout the litigation: The Department’s 1990-92 Plan impermissibly discriminated against him in violation of Title VII. On appeal, Shea enjoys a measure of latitude to elaborate on his theory in service of the same argument. His reliance on Ricci for the first time on appeal lies within that latitude. Moreover, although Shea did not press a .Ricci-based argument before the district court, the district court invoked Ricci on its own, observing that “nothing in Ricci directly overturns or modifies Johnson, at least as it applies to this case.” Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 54 n. 17. Shea is permitted to respond on appeal by explaining why he thinks Ricci governs this case. See Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310, 330, 130 S.Ct. 876, 175 L.Ed.2d 753 (2010).

Shea’s argument based on Ricci fails on the merits, however. Johnson and Weber are directly applicable to this case. They set out the framework for “evaluating the compliance of an affirmative action plan with Title VIPs prohibition on discrimination,” Johnson, 480 U.S. at 640, 107 S.Ct. 1442, the precise question in issue here. Those decisions unquestionably would control our analysis unless a subsequent decision dictates otherwise. Ricci is not such a decision. In reaching that conclusion, we draw guidance from the Supreme Court’s admonition against concluding that its “more recent cases have, by implication, overruled an earlier precedent.” Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237, 117 S.Ct. 1997, 138 L.Ed.2d 391 (1997). Rather, if “a precedent of [the Supreme] Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to [the] Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Id.

Here, Johnson and Weber have “direct application,” and we have no occasion or cause to conclude that Ricci, “by implication,” overruled those decisions. Id. Indeed, Ricci does not mention or even cite — much less discuss- — Johnson and Weber. That is understandable, as Ricci, by its own description, addressed a particular situation not in issue here. Cf. Ricci, *55557 U.S. at 626, 129 S.Ct. 2658 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (“[Ricci ] does not involve affirmative action.”). In Ricci, the Court’s “analysis beg[an] with this premise: The City’s actions would violate the disparate-treatment prohibition of Title VII absent some valid defense.” Id. at 579, 129 S.Ct. 2658. The inquiry prescribed by Johnson and Weber, by contrast, pertains to assessing whether there is a violation of Title VII’s disparate-treatment prohibition in the first place, the same question we address here.

The specific question addressed in Ricci was whether, even though the City’s action in discarding the test results was assumed to violate Title VII’s disparate-treatment prohibition, that action could be justified based on a particular objective asserted by the City: avoiding liability in a Title VII disparate-impaci lawsuit. The Court expressly framed its holding by reference to actions taken for that particular purpose:

We hold only that, under Title VII, before an employer can engage in intentional discrimination for the asserted purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional disparate impact, the employer must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action.

Id.; see id. at 580, 129 S.Ct. 2658 (“We consider, therefore, whether the purpose to avoid disparate-impact liability excuses what otherwise would be prohibited disparate-treatment discrimination.”) (emphasis added).

The employers in Johnson and Weber did not modify the outcomes of personnel-processes for the asserted purpose of avoiding disparate-impact liability under Title VII. Nor did the State Department here. The Department, like the employers in Johnson and Weber, instead acted to “expand[ ] job opportunities for minorities and women,” Johnson, 480 U.S. at 622, 107 S.Ct. 1442, and to “eliminate traditional patterns of racial segregation,” Weber, 443 U.S. at 201, 99 S.Ct. 2721; see id. at 209 & n. 9, 99 S.Ct. 2721. Ricci does not purport to reach the Department’s actions in pursuit of those purposes. Weber and Johnson therefore still control. The only other court of appeals of which we are aware to have addressed the interaction between Ricci and the Johnson-Weber framework reached the same conclusion. See United States v. Brennan, 650 F.3d 65, 102-04 (2d Cir.2011).

IV.

Under the framework established by Johnson and Weber, we ask first if Shea establishes a prima facie case of discrimination. Second, we examine whether the State Department can articulate a nondiscriminatory reason — in this case, a valid affirmative action plan — for its actions. Finally, we assess whether Shea carries his burden to prove that the Department’s plan is invalid. The district court found that Shea and the Department made the requisite showings at the first and second steps, respectively. The court then found Shea to falter at the third step and therefore granted summary judgment in favor of the Department. We agree at each step.

A.

We first address whether Shea has made out a prima facie case of reverse discrimination in violation of Title VII. At the outset, we note that neither party has addressed the potential implications of our decision in Brady v. Office of Sergeant at Arms, 520 F.3d 490 (D.C.Cir.2008), for Johnson’s direction to assess whether the “plaintiff establishes a prima facie case,” Johnson, 480 U.S. at 626, 107 S.Ct. 1442. Brady explained that, when “an employee *56has suffered an adverse employment action and an employer has asserted a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the decision, the district court need not — and should not — decide whether the plaintiff actually made out a prima facie case.” 520 F.3d at 494. Rather, “the district court must resolve one central question: Has the employee produced sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find that the employer’s asserted non-discriminatory reason was not the actual reason and that the employer intentionally discriminated against the employee on the basis of’ a prohibited characteristic? Id. We have since invoked Brady in the context of a reverse-discrimination claim. See Ginger v. District of Columbia, 527 F.3d 1340, 1344 (D.C.Cir.2008).

We have not, however, specifically applied Brady in the context of a reverse-discrimination suit challenging the validity of an employer’s affirmative action plan under Title VII. In that domain, Johnson has long set forth the governing approach. Because no party on appeal argues that Brady should alter that framework, and because the existence of a prima facie case • is readily resolved in this case in Shea’s favor, we leave for another day the resolution of the interaction between Brady and Johnson. We therefore proceed on the assumption that Johnson’s framework — including its call for examining the establishment of a prima facie case — is controlling for our purposes.

Here, the State Department contests Shea’s establishment of a prima facie case in only one respect. As part of the showing necessary to make out a pri-ma facie case of discrimination (or reverse discrimination) in violation of Title-VII, a plaintiff must establish that he has been subjected to an adverse employment action. George v. Leavitt, 407 F.3d 405, 412 (D.C.Cir.2005). The Department argues on appeal, for the first time in this case’s long history, that Shea suffered no adverse employment action from his hiring at an entry-level (rather than mid-level) position because he never applied for direct mid-level placement, either through the 1990-92 Plan or through the race-neutral CCP. We do not reach the merits of that argument because the Department forfeited it by failing to raise it until this late stage.

Although “we may affirm a judgment on any ground that the record supports and that the opposing party had a fair opportunity to address,” Jones v. Bernanke, 557 F.3d 670, 676 (D.C.Cir.2009) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted), an argument “never made below is waived on appeal,” id. (citing Marymount Hosp., Inc. v. Shalala, 19 F.3d 658 (D.C.Cir.1994)). The Department at no point in the previous fourteen years of litigating this case contended that Shea’s failure to apply for a mid-level position could affect his establishment of a prima facie case. It has instead fought Shea’s prima facie showing on other grounds. “[AJbsent exceptional circumstances not present here, it is not our practice to entertain issues first raised on appeal.” Marymount Hosp., 19 F.3d at 663 (quoting Roosevelt v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co., 958 F.2d 416, 419 & n. 5 (D.C.Cir.1992)) (quotation marks omitted). We adhere to that practice today. Because the Department has forfeited any argument that Shea suffered no adverse employment action, and because the Department otherwise does not challenge his establishment of a prima facie case on appeal, we agree with the district court that Shea has made that showing.

B.

At the second step of Johnson’s framework, the Department must “articulate a nondiscriminatory rationale for its decision.” Johnson, 480 U.S. at 626, 107 S.Ct. *571442. Johnson observes that “[t]he existence of an affirmative action plan provides such a rationale.” Id. We do not understand Johnson to mean, however, that an employer establishes a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its decision merely by showing that it acted pursuant to an affirmative action plan. See Hill v. Ross, 183 F.3d 586, 590 (7th Cir.1999).

Rather, the Johnson framework maps onto McDonnell Douglas’s three steps. Johnson, 480 U.S. at 626-27, 107 S.Ct. 1442. To satisfy its burden of production at the second McDonnell Douglas step, the State Department must “introduce evidence which, taken as true, would permit the conclusion that there was a nondiscriminatory reason for” its actions. St Mary’s Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 509, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993) (emphasis omitted). And while a valid affirmative action plan is considered nondiscriminatory, see Parker v. Balt. & Ohio R.R. Co., 652 F.2d 1012, 1017 n. 9 (D.C.Cir.1981), an invalid affirmative action plan is discriminatory, see Taxman, 91 F.3d at 1567. As a result, the Department needs to produce “evidence which, taken as true, would permit the conclusion” that it acted for a “nondiscriminatory reason,” i.e., pursuant to a valid affirmative action plan. Hicks, 509 U.S. at 509, 113 S.Ct. 2742 (emphasis omitted); see Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 33-34.

We have explained that, under Johnson and Weber, a valid affirmative action plan should satisfy two general conditions. First, a valid plan rests on an adequate factual predicate justifying its adoption, such as a “manifest imbalance” in a “traditionally segregated job category].” Johnson, 480 U.S. at 631, 107 S.Ct. 1442; see Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 74-75. Second, a valid plan refrains from “unnecessarily trammeling] the rights of [white] employees.” Johnson, 480 U.S. at 637-38, 107 S.Ct. 1442; see Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 81. We take up those considerations in order.

1.

The district court concluded that the Department adequately grounded its 1990-92 Plan in evidence of a manifest imbalance in a traditionally segregated job category. See Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 34-39. We agree.

a.

Ascertaining the existence of a “manifest imbalance” is a “fact-specific task” in a “sensitive and delicate area.” Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 75. One method that may be used to demonstrate such an imbalance—and the one relied on by the State Department here—entails a showing of statistical disparities between the racial makeup of the employer’s workforce and that of a “comparator population.” If the positions in question “require no special expertise,” the comparator population would be “ ‘the area labor market or general population.’ ” Id. (citation omitted) (quoting Johnson, 480 U.S. at 632, 107 S.Ct. 1442). But for “jobs that require special training,” the “ ‘comparison should be with those in the labor force who possess the relevant qualifications.’ ” Id. (citation omitted) (quoting Johnson, 480 U.S. at 632, 107 S.Ct. 1442).

When the Department adopted the 1990-92 Plan, the agency had before it two analyses comparing its own workforce with the labor pool possessing the relevant qualifications: (i) the 1989 GAO Report, and (ii) a formal analysis conducted by the Department itself when promulgating the 1990-92 Plan. The Department points to those two statistical studies as its principal evidence of a manifest imbalance between minority representation in the Foreign Service and the comparator population.

*58Shea contends that the Department cannot rely on either of those studies. He argues that the 1990-92 Plan amounted only to a continuation of a preexisting affirmative action plan in place from 1987-89, and that the 1990-92 Plan thus was actually adopted in 1987. Shea submits that any data on which the Department purports to justify any affirmative action plan must have been in its possession when it promulgated the plan — which, by Shea’s account, would have been in 1987, before either the 1989 GAO Report or the 199092 Plan’s analysis. Consequently, Shea argues, the State Department is foreclosed from invoking either study as a justification for its actions.

We assume arguendo the correctness of Shea’s premise that the Department cannot justify its race-conscious actions by reference to post hoc data collection. Even so, Shea errs in contending that the Department cannot rely on the 1989 GAO Report or the findings contained in the 1990-92 Plan to justify the Plan. The district court concluded that the Department’s 1987-89 affirmative action efforts and the 1990-92 Plan in fact were two different plans. See Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 30. We would tend to agree. But even if otherwise, the 199092 Plan at the very least amounted to a review and overhaul of the Department’s affirmative action efforts. See, e.g., U.S. Dep’t of State, Multi-Year Plan, FY 1990-92 at 51 (rev. version Apr. 30, 1991) (1990-92 Plan Document) (assembling new diversity statistics for purposes of the 1990-92 Plan); id. at 61 (noting that the 1987-89 plan “has been refined ... to define better the type of candidate to be recruited” (emphasis added)). “When a program that has been reauthorized is challenged, all evidence available to the [decisionmaker] prior to reauthorization must be considered in assessing” the program’s legality. Rothe Dev. Corp. v. U.S. Dep’t of Def., 262 F.3d 1306, 1328 (Fed.Cir.2001). Accordingly, even if the 1990-92 Plan amounted to a reauthorization of the Department’s 1987-89 affirmative action efforts, and even if the Department cannot justify its actions based on post hoc data, the 1989 GAO Report and the findings contained in-the 1990-92 Plan are a proper evidentiary proffer.

The version of the 1990-92 Plan in our record contains the Department’s employment data from 1989 and 1990. As the 1989 data represent the data in the State Department’s possession both at the time it promulgated the 1990-92 Plan and at the time Shea applied to the Foreign Service, we use that data (though we note that the minor differences between the 1989 and 1990 data would have no impact on our conclusions today). The 1990-92 Plan’s findings showed improvement in the Foreign Service’s diversity from the time of the 1989 GAO Report. The combined FS-02 and -03 levels, for instance, showed underrepresentation only for Native Americans and Alaskans. See 1990-92 Plan Document at 46a; 47a. For other minority populations at the combined FS-02 and -03 positions, there were no imbalances, manifest or otherwise. As a result, Shea contends, the Department cannot justify the 1990-92 Plan by claiming that it addressed manifest imbalances for all minority groups at those levels.

The Department initially asserts that the 1990-92 Plan established “goals” only for groups specifically shown in the data to be underrepresented.. We take this to mean, for example, that, at the combined FS-02 and -03 levels, “goals” would have been set only for Native Americans and Alaskans, and not for other minority populations. If the “goals” operated such that only members of the underrepresented minority groups received favorable treatment in the application process relative to Shea, the Department’s argument would have *59force. But the Department provides no information about how the “goals” would have worked in practice. And we find no description in the record. All that we can glean from the record is that all minority applicants received the main benefit available under the 1990-92 Plan — waiver of the certificate-of-need requirement for entry into the FS-01, -02, and -03 levels.

The Department’s defense of the 1990-92 Plan stands on stronger footing, however, with regard to more senior-level positions. Looking up the ranks from the FS-02 and -08 levels, the Department identified a more across-the-board manifest imbalance. The Department first points to the FS-01 level. According to the 1990-92 Plan data, all minority groups were underrepresented at the FS-01 level at the time of the plan’s promulgation. To achieve full representation, the number of black Officers at that level would have needed to increase by 62%, Hispanics by 14%, Native Americans and Alaskans by 256%, and Asians and Pacific Islanders by 47%. See 1990-92 Plan Document at 46a; 47a.

The Department also points to the ranks of the SFS. The on diversity in the SFS. Accordingly, we look to the SFS findings from the 1989 GAO Report. Those findings show underrepresentation of all minority groups at the SFS level. And the imbalances are manifest: To achieve full representation, the number of black Officers in the SFS would have needed to increase by 154%, Hispanics by 163%, Asians and Pacific Islanders by 700%, and, for Native Americans and Alaskans, by an undefined percentage (because the Foreign Service had no SFS Officer of Native American or Alaskan origin). See 1989 GAO Report at 17.

b.

Johnson speaks in terms not just of any manifest imbalance, but of a manifest imbalance in a traditionally segregated job category. 480 U.S. at 631, 107 S.Ct. 1442. As the Court explained, the “requirement that the manifest imbalance relate to a traditionally segregated job category provides assurance” that “race will be taken into account in a manner consistent with Title VII’s purpose of eliminating the effects of employment discrimination.” Id. at 632, 107 S.Ct. 1442 (quotation marks omitted). That approach guards against licensing an employer to seek proportional representation purely for its own sake. The Department must make a showing that, if taken as true, would permit the conclusion that the manifest imbalance resulted from a “predicate of discrimination” rather than from benign forces. Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 74-75, 80-81. We find that the Department has done so.

First, the substantial imbalances at the SFS level themselves indicate that discriminatory practices may well have been afoot. While a significant disparity is not itself dispositive, “ranks [that are] overwhelmingly] white” are “a powerful present-day demonstration of a prior regime of discrimination.” Hammon v. Barry (Hammon I), 813 F.2d 412, 427 (D.C.Cir.1987) (referring to Weber). Here, the disparity between white and non-white SFS Officers qualifies as overwhelming. Of the 655 serving SFS Officers counted by the 1989 GAO Report, 631 were white. See 1989 GAO Report at 17. “[F]ine tuning of the[se] statistics could not have obscured the glaring absence of minority” officers. Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 342 n. 23, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1977).

Second, testimony before Congress concerning the 1989 GAO Report, the Bremer Study Group Report, and the Thomas Commission Report provided Congress with evidence of pervasive historical discrimination in the Foreign Service tracing as far back as the 1960s. For example, *60one witness testified that, when he “entered on duty in State in late 1965 ... [he] had [his] first experience with discrimination, aside from what [he] had experienced while stationed in the South,” and further noted that “Minorities have been underrepresented purposefully” within the Department. 1989 Subcomm. Hearing at 33, 39. Another witness, focusing on gender discrimination at the Department, explained that, while “[^Instances of blatant sexism and discrimination have declined, ... some do still take place,” and “a simple glance at the statistics contained in the [1989 GAO Report] ... will confirm the continued existence of a problem.” Id. at 42. The former EEOC Commissioner offered his assessment that “[t]he State Department wants to hire what I call the mythical American, the 5'10,” 160 pound WASP man in perfect physical and mental health.” J.A. 342. And the Department’s Deputy Assistant for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights provided testimony that, around the world, he had “encountered complaints of discrimination from [State’s] employees and criticisms from foreigners for that same discrimination as exhibited by our predominantly white male diplomatic corps.” Id. at 13.

To the House Subcommittee on the Civil Service, such testimony likely came as no surprise. While the record before us does not contain the underlying materials, Representative Sikorski, the Subcommittee Chairman, stated his belief that those reports confirmed a State Department inadequately concerned with diversity. Previous investigations and hearings by his subcommittee, he stated, “documented serious instances of discriminatory treatment by the Foreign Service of women, minorities, and people with handicaps.” 1989 Joint Hearing at 10. His testimony included the revelation that “more than 240 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) cases” had been filed and indications that previous efforts to diversify the Foreign Service championed by the Secretary of State were “largely ignored by the Department.” Id. Moreover, he noted, the Department had “been repeatedly cited by the [EEOC] for submitting deficient [diversity] reports.” Id. The 1989 GAO Report noted that, despite repeated criticism including suggestions of bias, the State Department never “conducted analy-ses of possible impediments to equal employment opportunity.” 1989 GAO Report at 4.

This case is therefore a far cry from our decisions in Hammon I and II, in which we determined that the District of Columbia had failed to demonstrate the predicate of discrimination necessary to justify an affirmative action program for its hiring of firefighters. The challenged plan purportedly addressed the District’s history of discriminatory hiring against black applicants. But during the relevant historical period, blacks made up an average of 41.8% of the firefighters hired each year, Hammon I, 813 F.2d at 427, and, at the time of the challenge, 37% of the firefighting workforce overall, Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 77. The proper comparator pool was 29.3% black. Hammon I, 813 F.2d at 428. In light of those figures, the District “steadfastly and persuasively protested its innocence of any discriminatory activity,” and we agreed. Id. at 427.

Here, by contrast, evidence identified by the Department would permit the conclusion that there had been a past practice of discrimination with continuing effects through the early 1990s. We therefore agree with the district court that the Department made an adequate evidentiary proffer that the 1990-92 Plan “served to remedy the lingering effects of State’s past discrimination.” Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 39.

*612.

Having shown the necessary factual predicate for the 1990-92 Plan in the form of a manifest imbalance in a traditionally segregated job category, the Department faces one additional requirement: The plan must not have unnecessarily trammeled the rights of white applicants. Johnson, 480 U.S. at 637-38, 107 S.Ct. 1442; Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 81. We, like the district court, conclude that the Department has made an adequate showing in this regard.

a.

There is “no precise formula for determining whether an affirmative action plan unnecessarily trammels the rights of non-beneficiaries.” In re Birmingham Reverse Discrimination Emp’t Litig., 20 F.3d at 1541. Rather, a number of considerations inform the inquiry. See Johnson, 480 U.S. at 637-40, 107 S.Ct. 1442; Weber, 443 U.S. at 208-09, 99 S.Ct. 2721; Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 81. Those considerations weigh in favor of the 1990-92 Plan’s validity.

First, the type of affirmative action plan matters. Affirmative action in hiring generally poses less of a concern than affirmative action in layoffs. See Johnson, 480 U.S. at 638, 107 S.Ct. 1442. Hiring decisions upset settled expectations to a lesser degree (because an applicant has no absolute entitlement to a job), and they affect a more diffuse group (all potential applicants) than do layoffs, which target specific employees. See United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 183, 107 S.Ct. 1053, 94 L.Ed.2d 203 (1987) (plurality opinion) (“Denial of a future employment opportunity ... is not as intrusive as loss of an existing job.”) (quotation marks omitted); cf. Firefighters Local Union No. 1784 v. Stotts, 467 U.S. 561, 578-79, 104 S.Ct. 2576, 81 L.Ed.2d 483 (1984). Here, the 199092 Plan awarded benefits to minority candidates only in the hiring process, and even then, only at the very initial stage.

Second, the degree of benefit, or “plus,” bestowed by the affirmative action plan can make a difference. Affirmative action resulting in the hiring only of qualified candidates more easily survives scrutiny than affirmative action resulting in the hiring of unqualified beneficiaries. See Johnson, 480 U.S. at 637-38, 107 S.Ct. 1442. In this case, the Department’s 1990-92 Plan provided for hiring only of qualified candidates: Minority applicants considered through the 1990-92 Plan underwent the same rigorous application path as did white candidates considered through the race-neutral CCP, with the only difference coming in the form of the eertificate-of-need waiver at the threshold.

Third, the goals of the affirmative action plan affect the inquiry. A plan that seeks to achieve full representation for the particular purpose of remedying past discrimination will generally be shorter in duration than one that pursues proportional diversity for its own sake. When a plan pursues only the former goal, it presumably would cease to operate once full representation is achieved. And the shorter the time period for which a plan is in operation, the less it could be said adversely to affect non-beneficiaries. In Weber, for instance, the Court approvingly observed that the plan it upheld was “not intended to maintain racial balance, but simply to eliminate a manifest racial imbalance.” 443 U.S. at 208, 99 S.Ct. 2721; see Johnson, 480 U.S. at 639—40, 107 S.Ct. 1442. Here, the 1990-92 Plan sought to attain more proportional representation, not to maintain it in perpetuity. Indeed, the 1990-92 Plan ceased to operate in 1993 and has not been replaced. Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 41-42.

Fourth, the extent to which the challenged plan limits opportunities for advancement by non-beneficiaries is a rele*62vant consideration. In both Johnson and Weber, the Court observed that the plan in question created no “absolute bar” to the advancement of non-beneficiaries. Johnson, 480 U.S. at 637-38, 107 S.Ct. 1442; Weber, 443 U.S. at 208, 99 S.Ct. 2721. Here, Shea makes no argument that the 1990-92 Plan engendered any “absolute bar” to the advancement of non-minorities in the Foreign Service ranks. Non-minority candidates from outside the agency could apply directly to the mid-level ranks through the race-neutral CCP, and internal white candidates could — and did — gain promotion to mid-level positions from the Foreign Service entry-level ranks.

b.

Our court has understood the need to avoid “unnecessarily ” trammeling the rights of non-minority candidates to indicate that a challenged affirmative action plan generally must be “tailored to fit the violation” sought to be addressed. Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 74; see id. at 81. Here, the 1990-92 Plan granted a certifi-. cate-of-need waiver to candidates applying to the FS-01, -02, and -03 levels. The Department’s identified manifest imbalances, however, occurred at only the more senior levels. Why bestow benefits at the FS-02 and -03 levels if the manifest imbalances sought to be addressed existed only at more senior positions? To do so, Shea contends, means that the 1990-92 Plan was so over-inclusive as to unnecessarily trammel the rights of white applicants at the FS-02 and -03 levels.

The Department submits that there is a sound explanation for targeting the FS-02 and -03 levels to address an imbalance at more senior levels. The 1990-92 Plan satisfies the tailoring requirement, the Department explains, because the FS-02 and -03 levels serve as the training grounds for learning the skills necessary to perform at the SFS and FS-01 levels. We agree.

The plan upheld in Weber is instructive. The employer in Weber aimed to remedy the manifest imbalance in its ranks of skilled workers: a mere 1.83% of its skilled workers were black, while the labor force in the surrounding area was 39% black. 443 U.S. at 198-99, 99 S.Ct. 2721. To address the identified imbalance in its skilled workforce, however, the employer could not simply hire laborers lacking the requisite skills. Rather, it needed to hire laborers after they had acquired those skills. The employer established a training program to tackle that problem, stipulating that 50% of all employees entering the training program would be black until the percentage of black skilled workers in its workforce approximated the percentage in the local labor force. See id. at 199, 99 S.Ct. 2721.

Weber thus provides an example of an affirmative action plan going beyond strictly proportional representation in a training program: 50% of the spots would go to the company’s black workers, even though black persons made up only 39% of the area labor force. Employees who had completed Weber’s training program could then proceed to the rank of skilled worker, where the' manifest imbalance existed. The need to create an adequate pipeline of trained workers meant that the program was sufficiently tailored to target the “manifest imbalance” among skilled workers.

The State Department’s 1990-92 Plan worked similarly. In order to attain full representation at the SFS and FS-01 levels, the Department maintains, it had to go beyond strictly proportional minority representation at the FS-02 and -03 levels. It could then choose from qualified minority candidates at those levels to staff its SFS and FS-01 ranks.

With regard to the SFS, the Department’s hiring regulations in place at the *63time of the 1990-92 Plan demonstrate that the Department valued a certain set of skills in its SFS Officers and believed that the best way for SFS candidates to gain those experiences was through service in the mid-level Foreign Service ranks. The regulations provided that career SFS Officers “normally shall be appointed as the result of promotion of Mid-Level career officers,” and generally limited the SFS to a maximum of five percent external hires at any given time. Appointment of Members of the Foreign Service, 48 Fed.Reg. 38,606, 38,607 (Aug. 25, 1983). Additionally, career SFS applicants generally had to have completed at least five years of service in a position “of responsibility ... equivalent to that of a Mid-Level Foreign Service officer (classes FS-1 through FS-3),” with “duties and responsibilities ... similar to or closely related to that of a Foreign Service officer in terms of knowledge, skills, abilities, and overseas work experience.” Id. The difficulties encountered by those directly promoted to a mid- or high-level position in the Foreign Service, which usually included a “prolonged adjustment period” and experiencing “a competitive disadvantage,” further suggest that percolating through the ranks was, generally, a sounder career path.

The conclusion from the then-existing regulations is straightforward: The Department believed that the best training for the role of a SFS Officer was experience as an FS-01, -02, or -03 Foreign Service Officer. The Department similarly valued skills gleaned from experience at the FS-02 and -03 ranks for the position of an FS-01, with outside hires into the FS-01 ranks serving as the small exception to the Department’s general internal promotion ladder. See J.A. 343, 516-17. Shea has introduced no evidence contradicting that understanding.

In view of the Department’s assessment that the most qualified candidates for the SFS and FS-01 ranks would come from its own mid-levels, the Department understandably saw a need to go further than strictly proportional representation in its mid-levels. That was necessary, the Department reasonably concluded, in order to have a sufficient reservoir of talented minority candidates from which to hire in order to achieve diversity in its SFS and FS-01 ranks. Otherwise, assuming that promotion rates were the same across races from the mid-levels to the SFS and FS-01 levels, the Department would need to await a great deal of turnover in the overwhelmingly white SFS and FS-01 ranks before the substantial imbalances at those levels would be rectified.

Congressional testimony on the 1989 GAO Report reveals that very concern. Joseph Kelley of the General Accounting Office, in response to questioning about when “the State Department [would] become representative of the American people,” told Congress that “[i]t is going to take a long time,” and noted that the EEOC had been pushing the Department “to have a program to move people around and to have upper-level promotions, but it ha[d]n’t worked out that well.” 1989 Sub-comm. Hearing at 29-30. The Department required a method by which to augment the flow of minority candidates to the SFS and FS-01 levels. As Representative Sikorski observed, “if the numbers [only] get[ ] better in ... entry level and hiring,” then “there is no upward progress. There is no flow in the right direction. We are talking centuries.” Id. at 29-30.

It is no answer to claim that the Department could simply promote minorities to the SFS and FS-01 levels at higher rates than their non-minority peers. That itself would have been a race-conscious action requiring justification. That option, at any rate, appears to have been non-viable. Testimony before Congress indicated that *64promotions of minorities to high-level positions were already happening “too fast,” such that the Department began “to get a backlash” that promotions were “not [of) qualified ... minorities” and that those promoted were “not really ready to make this jump.” Id. at 47. Title VII does not require the Department to promote unqualified candidates to execute the important mission of our diplomatic corps. For those reasons, the 1990-92 Plan’s emphasis on hiring at mid-level positions was adequately tailored to address manifest imbalances at the senior levels.

At its root, finally, the unnecessary trammeling inquiry amounts to an exercise in balancing a plan’s attempts to remedy past discrimination against the plan’s adverse impact on the rights of non-minorities. In this ease, the latter impact was unquestionably limited. The 1989 GAO Report indicates that the State Department had 655 SFS Officers, 836 FS-01 Officers, and 2,032 FS-02 or -03 Officers. 1989 GAO Report at 17. Against that backdrop, the Department informs us that only sixteen minority candidates were hired into the mid-levels through the 1990-92 Plan over the three calendar years of its operation. With such a modest effect on the hiring process, the 1990-92 Plan was necessarily limited in the extent to which it could “trammel” Shea’s rights, “unnecessarily” or otherwise.

c.

The tailoring inquiry, according to our decisions, also takes into account whether the employer considered race-neutral alternatives. See Hammon II, 826 F.2d at 81. While the program we considered in Hammon failed to pass muster because “reasonable alternatives were not seriously discussed,” Hammon I, 813 F.2d at 430, the district court in this case found the Department’s evidence to show that it turned to the 1990-92 Plan’s race-conscious measures only after race-neutral efforts failed to bear fruit. Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 40-41. We agree.

The record documents a number of previous attempts to correct the identified imbalances without resort to explicit racial preferences, particularly through recruiting and outreach. From 1964 on, the Department targeted historically black institutions as part of its “diplomat in residence” program, through which it assigned a senior-level Foreign Service Officer to research, writing, and teaching duties at a university in an effort to generate interest in the Foreign Service among students. 1989 GAO Report at 24. From 1980 on, the Department made a concentrated recruiting push to stimulate an increase in minority applicants, including by “provid[ing] information packages to colleges ... and askfing] college coordinators to encourage minorities ... to take the annual written [Foreign Service] examination.” Id. at 22-23. The Department’s recruiters made special efforts to visit colleges and universities with large minority enrollments'. Id. at 23. Ultimately, however, the Department concluded that its “recruiting efforts [did] not increase[] the number of minorities taking the FS examination for officer positions.” Id. And in 1986, the Secretary of State implemented a recommendation from black Foreign Service Officers aimed at elevating minority written exam pass rates by increasing minority enrollment in university courses relevant to the exam. That initiative, too, apparently proved unsatisfactory. See id. at 25.

The Department also instituted “sensitivity training” between “senior management” and “senior minorities” to address the gap, with little success. J.A. 369-70. Moreover, it considered implementing an entirely race-neutral mid-level entry program, but rejected that option as unlikely to be effective-an understandable conclu*65sion in light of the inadequacy of State’s earlier reliance on “the promotion of entry level FS officers to eliminate underrepre-sentation at more senior levels.” J.A. 301, 543. The 1990-92 Plan thus hardly constituted the Department’s maiden effort to solve its persistent diversity problem, and Shea points to no other race-neutral alternatives that should have been considered.

The Department, in short, has introduced evidence that the 1990-92 Plan worked to target manifest imbalances in senior-level positions in the Foreign Service Officer corps, and that those imbalances resulted from past discrimination. It has also introduced evidence that the Plan refrained from unnecessarily trammeling the rights of non-minority candidates. We therefore conclude that the Department satisfies its burden to introduce evidence that, if taken as true, demonstrates the 1990-92 Plan’s validity under Johnson and Weber.

V.

Having concluded that the Department met its burden of Douglas framework, we ask at the final step whether Shea has proven that the Department’s “justification is pretextual and the plan is invalid.” Johnson, 480 U.S. at 626, 107 S.Ct. 1442. In the district court, Shea introduced his own lay statistical evidence in an attempt to show that the Department’s identified manifest imbalances did not exist. See Shea, 961 F.Supp.2d at 45-53. The district court rejected every piece of statistical evidence proffered by Shea as inadmissible. See id. Shea does not appeal those findings, and he raises no other claims of the 1990-92 Plan’s invalidity for purposes of Johnson’s third step. He therefore necessarily fails to carry his burden at that step, warranting the entry of summary judgment in favor of the Department.

‡ sfc H* Hí # ‡

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment.

So ordered.

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge,

concurring:

I join the court’s opinion painstakingly applying the key Supreme Court cases, Johnson v. Transp. Agency, Santa Clara, Cnty., 480 U.S. 616, 107 S.Ct. 1442, 94 L.Ed.2d 615 (1987), and United Steelworkers v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 99 S.Ct. 2721, 61 L.Ed.2d 480 (1979). I write separately to note that this area of the law continues to be rather amorphous and to call attention to a statistical problem disclosed by the record but not raised by the plaintiff on appeal.

Nearly three decades ago Judge Silber-man observed that he was “uncertain as to the meaning of ‘manifest imbalance.’ ” Hammon v. Barry, 826 F.2d 73, 81 (D.C.Cir.1987) (Silberman, J., concurring in denial of rehearing). I fully share that uncertainty, and would add that I have the same reaction to all of the key terms prescribed by the Supreme Court for assessing affirmative action plans under Title VII: whether there has been “manifest imbalance” in a “traditionally segregated job category,” and whether the plan “unnecessarily trammels the rights” of the persons disfavored. Court Op., 57. It may be that the Supreme Court selected these terms to assure that, without saying it in so many words, an employer can use race and gender for hiring or promoting minorities or women to the extent appropriate to assure that there is no “under-representation” — i.e., to amend any nontrivial deviation from proportionality to some more or less plausible applicant pool (at least so long as the employer can muster vague, generalized and/or hearsay assertions of past discrimination). This is not a *66self-evident interpretation of Title VII’s directive that employers are not “to discriminate against any individual ... because of such individual’s race [or] sex.”

The effect is especially striking here: Shea neither challenged the district court’s ruling that his analysis of the State Department’s calculations was inadmissible, Court Op. 65, nor its ruling that the affirmative action plan’s repeated declarations of “manifest imbalance” were sufficient without expert provision of statistical support. See Shea v. Kerry, 961 F.Supp.2d 17, 51-52 (D.D.C.2013). The figures underpinning State’s plan consist mainly of numerical comparisons of various subgroups of Foreign Service employees (“Administrative,” “Professional,” “Clerical,” etc.) with a selected comparison group based on the “National Civilian Labor Force” data for various types of workers, e.g., “Public Administration Administrators and Officials.” Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) 209, 216. The description of the study in the record, J.A. 209, does not state what statistical test or standard of statistical significance the authors used, or indeed whether they used any statistical method at all. Certainly they do not suggest that they made an adjustment in the standard for statistical significance to account for the multiplicity of subgroups, as would be necessary if we assume that State was seeking to identify only “imbalances” not attributable to random chance. “When interpreting ... a table which summarizes results from a number of comparisons, one must bear in mind that when the number of comparisons is large [State’s report included hundreds], the probability may be substantial that at least one disparity with a P-value less than .05 will occur because of pure chance.” David C. Baldus & James W.L. Cole, Statistical Proof of Discrimination § 9.03 (Supp. 1987); see also id. at n.24a (“It is a mathematical fact that where 17 independent comparisons are to be tested, the probability of finding one or more to be statistically significant at the .05 level is .58, or almost 6 chances in 10.”).

Further impairing the value of the analysis is that many of the subsets are so small as to indicate a complete lack of intelligible criteria for State’s assertions of “manifest imbalance,” a term the report often uses but never explains. The report contains charts that split the workforce three ways (by occupational subgroup, ethnicity, and gender), and in one case it announces that it “reveals” a “manifest imbalance” of American Indian females (who represent 0.2% of the labor force comparison data) in the Finance Officer division, which employs only 125 people. J.A. 224-25. It seems improbable that any statistical test or standard of significance could yield evidence of a non-random “imbalance” for so small a subgroup. To the extent the report is suggesting that some purported “imbalances” could be amended by the hiring of a single employee of the right ethnicity and gender in the occupational unit in question, that response would, in turn, presumably create “imbalance” in another direction — thus appearing to undermine whatever criteria may have been used to define “manifest imbalance.” See, e.g., J.A. 218-19; 224-25. I recognize that Johnson is quite specific in stating that the proof of imbalance needed as a prerequisite for race- and gender-based affirmative action preferences is less than what is needed to establish a prima facie case of a Title VII violation, 480 U.S. at 632-33, 107 S.Ct. 1442, but an employer performing this exercise should at least be able to state its criteria for “manifest imbalance.”

The State Department in this respect sounds rather like the defendant university in Hill v. Ross, 183 F.3d 586, 591 (7th Cir.1999): “What the University appears to have in mind is a world in which the *67absence of discrimination means that every department would exactly mirror the population from which its members are hired. But that is statistical nonsense.” In Hill, Judge Easterbrook went on to explain in detail what made the university’s theories nonsensical. Without close attention, Johnson’s seeming license to pursue proportionality in a workforce can dissolve into a license to pursue proportionality in almost any subset of the workforce.