Under financial duress, a school district was forced to lay off teachers. The Business Department of the high school had two female teachers equal in seniority and performance. One of the teachers was African-American and the other white. Unable to resort to its usual procedure of conducting layoffs in reverse order of seniority, and concerned that the Business Department would be left without any African-American faculty, the district invoked its affirmative action plan to retain the African-American teacher and lay off her white colleague. Overall, the percentage of African-American faculty in the school district exceeded the percentage in the surrounding labor market. However, the district pointed to the effect that laying off the African-American teacher would have at the department level and to the need for a highly diverse faculty to serve as role models for a student body that included a high percentage of African-American students. The white teacher who was laid off sued.