616 O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment to reckon with the reality of the course that the majority of the Court has determined to follow. In my view, the proper initial inquiry in evaluating the legality of an affirmative action plan by a public employer under Title VII is no different from that required by the Equal Protection Clause. In either case, consistent with the congressional intent to provide some measure of protection to the interests of the employer's nonminority employees, the employer must have had a firm basis for believing that remedial action was required. An employer would have such a firm basis if it can point to a statistical disparity sufficient to support a prima facie claim under Title VII by the employee beneficiaries of the affirmative action plan of a pattern or practice claim of discrimination. In Weber, this Court balanced two conflicting concerns in construing § 703(d): Congress' intent to root out invidious discrimination against any person on the basis of race or gender, McDonald v. Santa Fe Transportation Co., 427 U. S. 273 (1976), and its goal of eliminating the lasting effects of discrimination against minorities. Given these conflicting concerns, the Court concluded that it would be inconsistent with the background and purpose of Title VII to prohibit affirmative action in all cases. As I read Weber, however, the Court also determined that Congress had balanced these two competing concerns by permitting affirmative action only as a remedial device to eliminate actual or apparent discrimination or the lingering effects of this discrimination. Contrary to the intimations in JUSTICE STEVENS' concurrence, this Court did not approve preferences for minorities "for any reason that might seem sensible from a business or a social point of view." Ante, at 645. Indeed, such an approach would have been wholly at odds with this Court's holding in McDonald that Congress intended to prohibit practices that operate to discriminate against the employment opportunities of nonminorities as well as minorities. Moreover, in Weber the Court was careful to consider the effects of the af O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment 480 U. S. firmative action plan for black employees on the employment opportunities of white employees. 443 U. S., at 208. Instead of a wholly standardless approach to affirmative action, the Court determined in Weber that Congress intended to permit affirmative action only if the employer could point to a "manifest imbalanc[e] in traditionally segregated job categories." Id., at 197. This requirement both "provides assurance. . . that sex or race will be taken into account in a manner consistent with Title VII's purpose of eliminating the effects of employment discrimination," ante, at 632, and is consistent with this Court's and Congress' consistent emphasis on the value of voluntary efforts to further the antidiscrimination purposes of Title VII. Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U. S. 267, 290 (1986) (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). The Weber view of Congress' resolution of the conflicting concerns of minority and nonminority workers in Title VII appears substantially similar to this Court's resolution of these same concerns in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, supra, which involved the claim that an affirmative action plan by a public employer violated the Equal Protection Clause. In Wygant, the Court was in agreement that remedying past or present racial discrimination by a state actor is a sufficiently weighty interest to warrant the remedial use of a carefully constructed affirmative action plan. The Court also concluded, however, that "[s]ocietal discrimination, without more, is too amorphous a basis for imposing a racially classified remedy." Id., at 276. Instead, we determined that affirmative action was valid if it was crafted to remedy past or present discrimination by the employer. Although the employer need not point to any contemporaneous findings of actual discrimination, I concluded in Wygant that the employer must point to evidence sufficient to establish a firm basis for believing that remedial action is required, and that a statistical imbalance sufficient for a Title VII prima facie 616 O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment case against the employer would satisfy this firm basis requirement: "Public employers are not without reliable benchmarks in making this determination. For example, demonstrable evidence of a disparity between the percentage of qualified blacks on a school's teaching staff and the percentage of qualified minorities in the relevant labor pool sufficient to support a prima facie Title VII pattern or practice claim by minority teachers would lend a compelling basis for a competent authority such as the School Board to conclude that implementation of a voluntary affirmative action plan is appropriate to remedy apparent prior employment discrimination." Id., at 292. The Wygant analysis is entirely consistent with Weber. In Weber, the affirmative action plan involved a training program for unskilled production workers. There was little doubt that the absence of black craftworkers was the result of the exclusion of blacks from craft unions. Steelworkers v Weber, 443 U. S., at 198, n. 1 (“Judicial findings of exclusion from crafts on racial grounds are so numerous as to make such exclusion a proper subject for judicial notice"). The employer in Weber had previously hired as craftworkers only persons with prior craft experience, and craft unions provided the sole avenue for obtaining this experience. Because the discrimination occurred at entry into the craft union, the "manifest racial imbalance" was powerful evidence of prior race discrimination. Under our case law, the relevant comparison for a Title VII prima facie case in those circumstances-discrimination in admission to entry-level positions such as membership in craft unions-is to the total percentage of blacks in the labor force. See Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324 (1977); cf. Sheet Metal Workers v. EEOC, 478 U. S. 421, 437-439 (1986) (observing that lower courts had relied on comparison to general labor force in finding Title VII violation by union). Here, however, the evidence of past discrimination is more complex. The num O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment 480 U. S. ber of women with the qualifications for entry into the relevant job classification was quite small. A statistical imbalance between the percentage of women in the work force generally and the percentage of women in the particular specialized job classification, therefore, does not suggest past discrimination for purposes of proving a Title VII prima facie case. See Hazelwood School District v. United States, 433 U. S. 299, 308, and n. 13 (1977). Unfortunately, the Court today gives little guidance for what statistical imbalance is sufficient to support an affirmative action plan. Although the Court denies that the statistical imbalance need be sufficient to make out a prima facie case of discrimination against women, ante, at 632, the Court fails to suggest an alternative standard. Because both Wygant and Weber attempt to reconcile the same competing concerns, I see little justification for the adoption of different standards for affirmative action under Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause. While employers must have a firm basis for concluding that remedial action is necessary, neither Wygant nor Weber places a burden on employers to prove that they actually discriminated against women or minorities. Employers are "trapped between the competing hazards of liability to minorities if affirmative action is not taken to remedy apparent employment discrimination and liability to nonminorities if affirmative action is taken." Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U. S., at 291 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Moreover, this Court has long emphasized the importance of voluntary efforts to eliminate discrimination. Id., at 290. Thus, I concluded in Wygant that a contemporaneous finding of discrimination should not be required because it would discourage voluntary efforts to remedy apparent discrimination. A requirement that an employer actually prove that it had discriminated in the past would also unduly discourage voluntary efforts to remedy apparent discrimination. As I emphasized in Wygant, a chal 616 O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment lenge to an affirmative action plan "does not automatically impose upon the public employer the burden of convincing the court of its liability for prior unlawful discrimination; nor does it mean that the court must make an actual finding of prior discrimination based on the employer's proof before the employer's affirmative action plan will be upheld." Id., at 292. Evidence sufficient for a prima facie Title VII pattern or practice claim against the employer itself suggests that the absence of women or minorities in a work force cannot be explained by general societal discrimination alone and that remedial action is appropriate. In applying these principles to this case, it is important to pay close attention to both the affirmative action plan, and the manner in which that plan was applied to the specific promotion decision at issue in this case. In December 1978, the Santa Clara Transit District Board of Supervisors adopted an affirmative action plan for the Santa Clara County Transportation Agency (Agency). At the time the plan was adopted, not one woman was employed in respondents' 238 skilled craft positions, and the plan recognized that women "are not strongly motivated to seek employment in job classifications where they have not been traditionally employed because of the limited opportunities that have existed in the past for them to work in such classifications." App. 57. Additionally, the plan stated that respondents "recognize[d] that mere prohibition of discriminatory practices is not enough to remedy the effects of past practices and to permit attainment of an equitable representation of minorities, women and handicapped persons," id., at 31, and that "the selection and appointment processes are areas where hidden discrimination frequently occurs." Id., at 71. Thus, respondents had the expectation that the plan "should result in improved personnel practices that will benefit all Agency employees who may have been subjected to discriminatory personnel practices in the past." Id., at 35. |