[nordsieck]

That's not nearly enough. The 4/5ths rule is designed to identify "structural discrimination", or cases where no discriminatory act can be identified, but the outcomes are nonetheless considered discriminatory. As long as a lawyer can show that some protected group is disadvantaged by the quiz, that's enough for it to violate the rule.

[danieltillett]

I am not a lawyer, but I thought the defence was if you can show that the screening criteria correlated with on the job performance it is OK. No matter what you think of protected groups using a criteria that does not correlate with performance is not very smart anyway.

[nordsieck]

There may be some certification process you can go through to get a test approved, but mere job applicability isn't enough. For example, this firefighting test was found to violate the 4/5ths rule.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/213380090/1999-NYC-Firefighter-Wri...

You'd have a hard time convincing me that doing well on it didn't correlate with being a better firefighter.