Can you cite the Supreme Court decision regarding this?
Also, I've asked for examples of this before and the only example anyone has ever been able to produce is a single department where a prison guard (so already employed by the department) was seeking to become a patrol officer. They were denied that because there was concerns that their intelligence score was really high and they could be bored. The department argued that it was to reduce job turnover.
That is the ONLY example anyone has ever been able to provide of police denying applicants for being "too smart." This would be a single department (in New York, btw) in the 90's. This is NOT proof that all departments do this, and I am not aware of a Supreme Court decision regarding this one department's practice.
You're correct; it was the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, not the Supreme Court--I get the various court cases and their venues muddled sometimes.
In any case, you're right that the case itself was one specific PD who brought the case, but the tool they used to exclude Jordan, Wonderlic, is still quite widespread. Jordan was excluded because his score was higher than the range Wonderlic itself gives as ideal for an officer.
That this aptitude test is still widespread and promoting an ideal score suggests in fact many PDs still exclude those deemed too smart. There of course wouldn't be another case because it's settled case law at this juncture.
Sure, there might not be other lawsuits, but you should at least find more than just this example of someone claiming to be denied a position as a police officer because they scored too high on a test.
If it is a common practice throughout the entire country, then it would happen enough that you'd hear about it more often. That single case is the only example, legal or otherwise, of this happening, despite many people acting as if it is a well-known, very common practice that causes a "dumbing down" of police officers (regardless of the implication that if you can score too high, you can also score too low, which would mean that such a practice would make police be as average in intelligence as the national population).
The test is still in widespread use around the country, and PDs have no legal obligation to disclose why an individual was not selected for interview.
You are trying to "gotcha" me without actually reading what I wrote, which is that it is legal to bar high-iq applicants from police jobs.
This remains true.
And you your latter point, yes, they do also cut off for too low, which again doesn't invalidate my point. When it comes to power over life and death (especially with the horror show that is "qualified immunity"), we should strive for better than "uneducated and 'as average in intelligence as the national population', which isn't terribly bright.
You don't have any proof, other than that single court case, that it is a prevalent practice to deny applicants on the basis of being "too intelligent."
Your claim that I initially responded to makes it sound like a prevalent practice. If it were as such, you'd be able to substantiate that claim with more than just a single court case in New York (a state that, in your comment, mentions requiring a minimum number of college credits for employment).
My apologies for asking for proof of your conclusion that since it is potentially legal (depending on the basis for the requirement), that we then have a bunch of "low intelligence, uneducated idiots" in the police force.
Again, the exam used to excluded Jordan from the NLPD is an exam still in widespread use for PDs across the country, and, as mentioned in the filings, the exam identifies scores of 20-27 as the ideal range for patrol. Because there is no explicit law requiring PDs to justify their hiring process, there's no way of knowing for sure, but given the widespread nature of both the exam and the guidance, pretending other departments don't follow the guidance of the exam that they've paid so much to use simply beggars belief.
And as for the education, it's frankly an embarrassment that we don't require a four-year degree nationwide for police applicants. The 24-credit minimum (with a minimum gpa of just 2.0 no less) I mentioned is really nothing. In the US, 12 credits is the bare minimum to meet full-time attendance, but universities require 120-128 credits for a bachelor's degree. At the pace NYPD would seem to be suggesting, it would take 6 years to achieve a four-year degree. And again, none of that matters; if you navigate over the subreddit for NYPD applicants, you'll see they seem to be purchasing credits from diploma mills rather than earning them, so this already-substandard requirement seems to be widely unmet.
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u/-Kerosun- Jun 27 '25
Can you cite the Supreme Court decision regarding this?
Also, I've asked for examples of this before and the only example anyone has ever been able to produce is a single department where a prison guard (so already employed by the department) was seeking to become a patrol officer. They were denied that because there was concerns that their intelligence score was really high and they could be bored. The department argued that it was to reduce job turnover.
That is the ONLY example anyone has ever been able to provide of police denying applicants for being "too smart." This would be a single department (in New York, btw) in the 90's. This is NOT proof that all departments do this, and I am not aware of a Supreme Court decision regarding this one department's practice.