ABSTRACT
The United States began, in the mid-1960s, an extensive assault on racial and sexual discrimination. The omnibus Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Executive Order 11246 were major legislative and regulatory initiatives. In 1973, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and the Federal government entered into a consent decree that required extensive changes in the company’s employment practices. The consent decree entered into by AT&T, under the threat of extensive litigation, was designed to change the company’s employment practices. The equal opportunities defense has merit from a more abstract point of view as well. In many political theories, equality of opportunity ranks as a primary value. The equal opportunity defense of preferences is not the only possible forward-looking justification. Preferences might be defended as serving other goals. A frequent defense of preferentially admitting blacks to medical and law schools is the anticipation that this will eventually improve the delivery of medical and legal services to the black community.
