As President Lyndon Johnson said in 1965, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been completely fair."
United Steelworkers of America v. Weber involved a new in-plant training program for workers at a Louisiana plant that had hired few minorities in skilled positions. The employer and the union had agreed that 50 percent of the positions in the training program would go to African American employees and 50 percent to whites. Within each group, positions would be filled on the basis of seniority, meaning some junior African Americans would be admitted ahead of more senior whites.
In rejecting the claims of a white employee that the program violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Court said the law allowed affirmative action by private parties "to eliminate traditional patterns of racial segregation". One test of lawfulness was whether the program "unduly" trampled on the interests of white workers. The Court held that the plan passed the test because it did not require firing any white workers, nor did it create an "absolute bar" to white advancement. The plan was also permissible because it was "a temporary measure; it [was] not intended to maintain racial balance, but simply to eliminate a manifest racial imbalance."
