The EEOC Doesn't Want You to Discriminate Against the Stupid In Your Hiring

C. Boyden Gray, former White House counsel, pointed out a memo that the EEOC wrote recently that said that high school diploma requirements discriminate against the learning disabled.  Here is the key excerpt:

Thus, if an employer adopts a high school diploma requirement for a job, and that requirement "screens out" an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA's definition of "disability," the employer may not apply the standard unless it can demonstrate that the diploma requirement is job related and consistent with business necessity. The employer will not be able to make this showing, for example, if the functions in question can easily be performed by someone who does not have a diploma.
Even if the diploma requirement is job related and consistent with business necessity, the employer may still have to determine whether a particular applicant whose learning disability prevents him from meeting it can perform the essential functions of the job, with or without a reasonable accommodation. It may do so, for example, by considering relevant work history and/or by allowing the applicant to demonstrate an ability to do the job's essential functions during the application process. If the individual can perform the job's essential functions, with or without a reasonable accommodation, despite the inability to meet the standard, the employer may not use the high school diploma requirement to exclude the applicant.

Yup, that's right.  The employer has to prove that they can't just hire some idiot to do the job they are looking to fill.  And even after they prove that, they then have to show that there isn't a reasonable accommodation that they can make so that they can hire the idiot (I wonder how long before one of the possible accommodations includes hiring someone qualified to actually do the job for them?).  This accommodation seems to include a "demonstration" that the idiot isn't so idiotic.  And you just know that if there is some idiot class action and you find that none of these idiots got the opportunity to "demonstrate" their non-idiocy, that a company could be up sh*t's creek with the EEOC.  Also, given how the EEOC does things, I'm assuming that if a company has a fewer percentage of idiots than the general population that this company could be found to discriminate against the mentally deficient. 

I do realize that in many cases, stupidity is genetic and so it's not the idiots fault that he comes from a long line of buffoons, morons and schmucks.  But it seems that its not the businesses fault either and so they shouldn't have to bend over backwards in order NOT to hire the vacuous.

I guess Obama and the EEOC have found one way to get around the fact that our failing, union-run, public schools are churning out students who are barely able to qualify for positions at a Burger King.  For them, if a standard is too high, don't strive to achieve that standard, lower the bar.

Seriously, the wheel is turning but the Hamster's dead.