Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio

At remote Alaska salmon canneries, predominantly nonwhite local workers filled unskilled cannery positions while predominantly white non-local workers filled higher-paid, skilled noncannery positions, with segregated housing and dining during the season; a class of cannery workers (plaintiffs) sued Wards Cove (defendant) under Title VII alleging the company's hiring and promotion practices produced unlawful disparate impact, relying primarily on the raw statistical disparity between the two job categories, and the court of appeals found this sufficient to establish a prima facie case.