A federal judge has ruled that a trucking company illegally used a strength test for women returning to work from an injury or applying to be a truck driver.
The judge ruled the test issued by Stan Koch & Sons Trucking of Minneapolis and developed by Cost Reduction Technologies (CRT) discriminated against women truck drivers.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged the CRT test disproportionately screened out women who are qualified for truck driver positions at Koch.
The test was given to people who were given conditional offers of hire by Koch to work as truck drivers or who were already employed by Koch and were required to take the test to return to work after an injury.
“Employers are allowed to use hiring screens and they are allowed to use physical abilities testing, when appropriate,” said Julianne Bowman, the EEOC’s district director in Chicago. “However, when a hiring screen has disparate impact on female applicants and employees, like the CRT test did at Koch, employers need to take a hard look at whether they can prove those tests are job-related.”
