Patricia Lorance is an hourly wage employee at the Montgomery Works AT&T electronics products plant. She had been employed there since the early 1970s and under union rules accrued seniority through her years of service at the plant. In 1979, the union entered into a new collective bargaining agreement providing that seniority would be determined by department and not on a plant-wide basis. The effect of the change was to put Ms. Lorance at the bottom of the seniority ladder in the testing areas despite her longevity in the plant. When layoffs became necessary, she and the other female testers were laid off because of the new seniority rule. Without the new rule, Ms. Lorance and the other women would not have been victims of the cutbacks.
Does the seniority system violate Title VII? (Lorance v AT&T Technologies, Inc., 490 U.S. 900 (1989))