In 1979, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of black and Hispanic job applicants who did not receive offers of government employment following their taking the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE) as part of applying for federal jobs. The lawsuit Luevano v. Director, Office of Personnel Management said that since the examination had a “disparate impact” (i.e., average results per race / ethnicity were different), it should be abandoned. In 1981, the outgoing Carter administration signed a consent decree in the case, giving the plaintiffs essentially what they wanted. This is known as the Luevano Consent Decree.
Since then, there has been no replacement examination for entry-level white-collar federal jobs, due to the impossible standards such an examination would have to reach under the terms of the consent decree. Combinations of experience and education, with occasional very specific testing, are now used. Degree requirements are one of the ways agencies have tried to ensure qualified applicants, and this has caused a rise of credentialism—mandating academic degrees for positions that do not actually require them.
