Opinion of BRENNAN, J. 480 U. S. ment needs to make promotions. Thus, if external forces, such as budget cuts, necessitate a promotion freeze, the Department will not be required to make gratuitous promotions to remain in compliance with the court's order.29 Most significantly, the one-for-one requirement is ephemeral; the term of its application is contingent upon the Department's own conduct. The requirement endures only until the Department comes up with a procedure that does not have a discriminatory impact on blacks-something the Department was enjoined to do in 1972 and expressly promised to do by 1980. As noted at n. 21, supra, the court has taken into account the difficulty of validating a test and does not require validation as a prerequisite for suspension of the promotional requirement. The one-for-one requirement evaporated at the ranks of corporal and sergeant upon implementation of promotion procedures without an adverse impact, demonstrating that it is not a disguised means to achieve racial balance. Cf. Sheet Metal Workers, supra, at 487 (POWELL, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Finally, the record reveals that this requirement was flexible, waivable, and temporary in application. When the District Court imposed the provision, the judge expressed the hope that its use would be "a one-time occurrence." 585 F. Supp., at 76. The court believed that this hope would be fulfilled: at the January 15, 1984, hearing on the plaintiffs' mo Cf. Sheet Metal Workers, 478 U. S., at 478 (opinion of BRENNAN, J.) ("The [district] court has twice adjusted the deadline for achieving the [membership] goal, and has continually approved of changes in the size of the apprenticeship classes to account for the fact that economic conditions prevented petitioners from meeting their membership targets; there is every reason to believe that both the court and the administrator will continue to accommodate legitimate explanations for petitioners' failure to comply with the court's orders"); id., at 487-488 (POWELL, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) ("Additional flexibility is evidenced by the fact that this goal, originally set to be achieved by 1981, has been twice delayed and is now set for 1987"). 149 Opinion of BRENNAN, J. tion to enforce the consent decrees, "the Personnel Department pledged that it would now devote its full resources to assisting the Public Safety Department in not only developing acceptable promotion procedures as required by the two consent decrees, but in doing so within the near future." App. 141. The Department has since timely submitted procedures for promotions to corporal and sergeant, and the court has consequently suspended application of the promotional order with respect to those ranks. In the higher ranks, the Department has been permitted to promote only white troopers. It now appears that the effect of the order enforcing the decrees will be "the development of acceptable promotion procedures for all ranks and the nullification of the promotion quota." 767 F. 2d, at 1538, n. 19. The remedy chosen has proved both effective and flexible. C We must also examine the relationship between the numerical relief ordered and the percentage of nonwhites in the relevant work force. The original hiring order of the District Court required the Department to hire 50% black applicants until 25% of the state trooper force was composed of blacks; the latter figure reflects the percentage of blacks in the relevant labor market. 585 F. Supp., at 75, n. 2. The enforcement order at issue here is less restrictive: it requires the Department to promote 50% black candidates until 25% of the rank in question is black, but only until a promotion procedure without an adverse impact on blacks is in place. Thus, had the promotion order remained in effect for the rank of corporal, it would have survived only until 25% of the Department's corporals were black. The Government suggests that the one-for-one requirement is arbitrary because it bears no relationship to the 25% minority labor pool relevant here. This argument ignores that the 50% figure is not itself the goal; rather it represents the speed at which the goal of 25% will be achieved. The Opinion of BRENNAN, J. 480 U. S. interim requirement of one-for-one promotion (had it continued) would simply have determined how quickly the Department progressed toward this ultimate goal. This requirement is therefore analogous to the imposition in Sheet Metal Workers of an end date, which regulated the speed of progress toward fulfillment of the hiring goal. Sheet Metal Workers, 478 U. S., at 487-488 (POWELL, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). To achieve the goal of 25% black representation in the upper ranks, the court was not limited to ordering the promotion of only 25% blacks at any one time. Some promptness in the administration of relief was plainly justified in this case, and use of deadlines or end dates had proved ineffective. In these circumstances, the use of a temporary requirement of 50% minority promotions, which, like the end date in Sheet Metal Workers, was crafted and applied flexibly, was constitutionally permissible. The District Court did not accept the argument that in order to achieve a goal of 25% representation, it could order only 25% of any particular round of promotions to be awarded to minorities. Had it done so, the court would have implemented the Department's proposal to promote 4 blacks and 11 whites when it issued its order enforcing the consent decree, because this proposal approximated the 25% figure.30 Again, however, this proposal completely ignores the fact and the effects of the Department's past discrimination and its delay in implementing the necessary promotion proce 30 Following adoption of the plaintiffs' proposal that 8 blacks and 8 whites should be promoted, the corporal rank was composed of 14 black and 73 white troopers (16% black). Under the Department's proposal that 4 blacks and 11 whites should be promoted, the corporal rank would have been composed of 8 black and 79 white troopers (9.2% black). Neither proposal would have raised the percentage of blacks in the corporal rank to the 25% mark set as an alternative goal by the District Court (the other alternative being the adoption of a promotion procedure without adverse impact). Obviously, however, the plaintiffs' proposal provided an accelerated approach to achieving that goal to compensate for past delay. 149 Opinion of BRENNAN, J. dure. Here the District Court considered both the Department's proposal and the possibility of promoting blacks to all 15 corporal positions "[i]n light of the department's failure after almost twelve years to eradicate the continuing effects of its own discrimination and to develop acceptable promotion procedures and in light of the severity of the existing racial imbalances." 585 F. Supp., at 75, n. 1. The court rejected both of these alternatives and, upon consideration of the Department's behavior and of the interests and the purposes to be served, arrived at an intermediate figure. Although the appropriate ratio here "necessarily involve[d] a degree of approximation and imprecision," Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324, 372 (1977), the District Court, with its firsthand experience of the parties and the potential for resistance, imposed the requirement that it determined would compensate for past delay and prevent future recalcitrance, while not unduly burdening the interests of white troopers.31 It would have been improper for the District Judge to ignore the effects of the Department's delay and its continued default of its obligation to develop a promotion procedure, and to require only that, commencing in 1984, the Department promote one black for every three whites promoted. The figure selected to compensate for past discrimination and delay necessarily involved a delicate calibration of the rights 31 "We have previously recognized the importance of expediting elimination of the vestiges of longstanding discrimination. In United States v. Montgomery County Bd. of Education, 395 U. S. 225 (1969), we upheld a District Court's imposition of a black-to-white faculty goal against modifications made by the Court of Appeals, saying that the District Court order "was adopted in the spirit of this Court's opinion in Green v. County School Board, [391 U. S. 430, 439 (1968)], in that his plan 'promises realistically to work, and promises realistically to work now.' The modifications ordered by the panel of the Court of Appeals, while of course not intended to do so, would, we think, take from the order some of its capacity to expedite, by means of specific commands, the day when a completely unified, unitary, nondiscriminatory school system becomes a reality instead of a hope. . . ." Id., at 235. Opinion of BRENNAN, J. 480 U. S. and interests of the plaintiff class, the Department, and the white troopers. The Government concedes that a one-tothree requirement would have been lawful, Tr. of Oral Arg. 43; the District Court determined that more stringent measures were necessary. This Court should not second-guess the lower court's carefully considered choice of the figure necessary to achieve its many purposes, especially when that figure is hedged about with specific qualifying measures designed to prevent any unfair impact that might arise from rigid application.2 Ꭰ The one-for-one requirement did not impose an unacceptable burden on innocent third parties. As stated above, the temporary and extremely limited nature of the requirement substantially limits any potential burden on white applicants for promotion. It was used only once at the rank of corporal and may not be utilized at all in the upper ranks. Nor has the court imposed an "absolute bar" to white advancement. Sheet Metal Workers, supra, at 481. In the one instance in which the quota was employed, 50% of those elevated were white. The one-for-one requirement does not require the layoff and discharge of white employees and therefore does not impose burdens of the sort that concerned the plurality in Wygant, 476 U. S., at 283 (opinion of POWELL, J.) (“[L]ayoffs impose the entire burden of achieving racial equality on particular individuals, often resulting in serious disruption of JUSTICE O'CONNOR's dissent suggests that the percentage of minority individuals benefited by this race-conscious remedial order should not exceed the percentage of minority groups members in the relevant population or work force. Post, at 198. We disagree. Even within the narrow confines of strict scrutiny, there remains the requirement that the District Court not only refrain from ordering relief that violates the Constitution, but also that it order the relief necessary to cure past violations and to obtain compliance with its mandate. There will be cases-this is onewhere some accelerated relief is plainly justified. To say that it is not overlooks the history of this litigation. |