From the 1971 Supreme Court ruling:
"We granted the writ in this case to resolve the question whether an employer is prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, from requiring a high school education or passing of a standardized general intelligence test as a condition of employment in or transfer to jobs when
(a) neither standard is shown to be significantly related to successful job performance,
(b) both requirements operate to disqualify Negroes at a substantially higher rate than white applicants, and
(c) the jobs in question formerly had been filled only by white employees as part of a longstanding practice of giving preference to whites."
The article says that the IQ tests required by this VC firm are illegal, on account of this ruling.
But we cannot know that, as we don't know the facts of this particular situation. IANAL, but my reading of the opinion is that, for this case to apply, the following three conditions must hold:
1. The firm can't show IQ test scores are significantly correlated with job performance, and
2. The firm is rejecting candidates from one or more protected groups at a higher rate than the overall applicant pool, and
3. The firm must have been disproportionately hiring from a majority group.
Have I misinterpreted the ruling?