For these reasons, we cannot say that the District Court was wrong in holding that the statutory height and weight standards had a discriminatory impact on women applicants. The plaintiffs in a case such as this are not required to exhaust every possible source of evidence, if the evidence actually presented on its face conspicuously demonstrates a job requirement's grossly discriminatory impact. If the employer discerns fallacies or deficiencies in the data offered by the plaintiff, he is free to adduce countervailing evidence of his own. In this case no such effort was made.13

B

We turn, therefore, to the appellants' argument that they have rebutted the prima facie case of discrimination by showing that the height and weight requirements are job related. These requirements, they say, have a relationship to strength, a sufficient but unspecified amount of which is essential to effective job performance as a correctional counselor. In the District Court, however, the appellants produced no evidence correlating the height and weight requirements with the requisite amount of strength thought essential to good job performance. Indeed, they failed to offer evidence of any kind in specific justification of the statutory standards.11

13 The height and weight statute contains a waiver provision that the appellants urge saves it from attack under Title VII. See n. 2, supra. The District Court noted that a valid waiver provision might indeed have that effect, but found that applicants were not informed of the waiver provision, and that the Board of Corrections had never requested a waiver from the Alabama Peace Officers' Standards and Training Commission. The court therefore correctly concluded that the waiver provision as administered failed to overcome the discriminatory effect of the statute's basic provisions.

14 In what is perhaps a variation on their constitutional challenge to the validity of Title VII itself, see n. 1, supra, the appellants contend that the establishment of the minimum height and weight standards by statute requires that they be given greater deference than is typically

If the job-related quality that the appellants identify is bona fide, their purpose could be achieved by adopting and validating a test for applicants that measures strength directly.15 Such a test, fairly administered, would fully satisfy the standards of Title VII because it would be one that "measure[s] the person for the job and not the person in the abstract." Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S., at 436. But nothing in the present record even approaches such a measurement.

For the reasons we have discussed, the District Court was not in error in holding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, prohibits application of the statutory height and weight requirements to Rawlinson and the class she represents.

III

Unlike the statutory height and weight requirements, Regulation 204 explicitly discriminates against women on the basis of their sex.16 In defense of this overt discrimination,

given private employer-established job qualifications. The relevant legislative history of the 1972 amendments extending Title VII to the States as employers does not, however, support such a result. Instead, Congress expressly indicated the intent that the same Title VII principles be applied to governmental and private employers alike. See H. R. Rep. No. 92–238, p. 17 (1971); S. Rep. No. 92-415, p. 10 (1971). See also Schaeffer v. San Diego Yellow Cabs, 462 F. 2d 1002 (CA9). Thus for both private and public employers, "[t]he touchstone is business necessity," Griggs, 401 U. S., at 431; a discriminatory employment practice must be shown to be necessary to safe and efficient job performance to survive a Title VII challenge.

15 Cf. EEOC Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, 29 CFR § 1607 (1976). See also Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229, 246–247; Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405; Officers for Justice v. Civil Service Comm'n, 395 F. Supp. 378 (ND Cal.). 16 By its terms Regulation 204 applies to contact positions in both male and female institutions. See n. 6, supra. The District Court found, however, that "Regulation 204 is the administrative means by which the [Board of Corrections'] policy of not hiring women as correctional coun

the appellants rely on § 703 (e) of Title VII, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2 (e), which permits sex-based discrimination "in those certain instances where . . . sex . . . is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise."

The District Court rejected the bona-fide-occupationalqualification (bfoq) defense, relying on the virtually uniform view of the federal courts that § 703 (e) provides only the narrowest of exceptions to the general rule requiring equality of employment opportunities. This view has been variously formulated. In Diaz v. Pan American World Airways, 442 F.2d 385, 388, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that "discrimination based on sex is valid only when the essence of the business operation would be undermined by not hiring members of one sex exclusively." (Emphasis in original.) In an earlier case, Weeks v. Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co., 408 F. 2d 228, 235, the same court said that an employer could rely on the bfoq exception only by proving "that he had reasonable cause to believe, that is, a factual basis for believing, that all or substantially all women would be unable to perform safely and efficiently the duties of the job involved." See also Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp., 400 U. S. 542. But whatever the verbal formulation, the federal courts have agreed that it is impermissible under Title VII to refuse to hire an individual woman or man on the basis of stereotyped characterizations of the sexes," and the District selors in contact positions in all-male penitentiaries has been implemented." 418 F. Supp., at 1176. The Regulation excludes women from consideration for approximately 75% of the available correctional counselor jobs in the Alabama prison system.

17 See, e. g., Gillin v. Federal Paper Board Co., 479 F. 2d 97 (CA2); Jurinko v. Edwin L. Wiegand Co., 477 F. 2d 1038 (CA3); Rosenfeld v. Southern Pacific Co., 444 F. 2d 1219 (CA9); Bowe v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., 416 F. 2d 711 (CA7); Meadows v. Ford Motor Co., 62 F. R. D. 98 (WD Ky.), modified on other grounds, 510 F. 2d 939 (CA6). See also Jones Metal Products Co. v. Walker, 29 Ohio St. 2d 173, 281 N. E. 2d 1;

Court in the present case held in effect that Regulation 204 is based on just such stereotypical assumptions.

We are persuaded-by the restrictive language of § 703 (e), the relevant legislative history,18 and the consistent interpretation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 19-that the bfoq exception was in fact meant to be an extremely narrow exception to the general prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex.20 In the particular factual circumstances of this case, however, we conclude that the District Court erred in rejecting the State's contention that Regulation 204 falls within the narrow ambit of the bfoq exception.

The environment in Alabama's penitentiaries is a peculiarly inhospitable one for human beings of whatever sex. Indeed, a Federal District Court has held that the conditions of confinement in the prisons of the State, characterized by "rampant violence" and a "jungle atmosphere," are constitutionally intolerable. Pugh v. Locke, 406 F. Supp. 318, 325 (MD Ala.). The record in the present case shows that

EEOC Guidelines on Discrimination Because of Sex, 29 CFR § 1604 (1976).

18 See Interpretative Memorandum of Senators Clark and Case, 110 Cong. Rec. 7213 (1964).

19 The EEOC issued guidelines on sex discrimination in 1965 reflecting its position that "the bona fide occupational qualification as to sex should be interpreted narrowly." 29 CFR § 1604.2 (a). It has adhered to that principle consistently, and its construction of the statute can accordingly be given weight. See Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S., at 434; McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U. S. 273, 279–280.

20 In the case of a state employer, the bfoq exception would have to be interpreted at the very least so as to conform to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The parties do not suggest, however, that the Equal Protection Clause requires more rigorous scrutiny of a State's sexually discriminatory employment policy than does Title VII. There is thus no occasion to give independent consideration to the District Court's ruling that Regulation 204 violates the Fourteenth Amendment as well as Title VII.

because of inadequate staff and facilities, no attempt is made in the four maximum-security male penitentiaries to classify or segregate inmates according to their offense or level of dangerousness—a procedure that, according to expert testimony, is essential to effective penological administration. Consequently, the estimated 20% of the male prisoners who are sex offenders are scattered throughout the penitentiaries' dormitory facilities.

In this environment of violence and disorganization, it would be an oversimplification to characterize Regulation 204 as an exercise in "romantic paternalism." Cf. Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677, 684. In the usual case, the argument that a particular job is too dangerous for women may appropriately be met by the rejoinder that it is the purpose of Title VII to allow the individual woman to make that choice for herself." More is at stake in this case, however, than an individual woman's decision to weigh and accept the risks of employment in a "contact" position in a maximum-security male prison.

The essence of a correctional counselor's job is to maintain prison security. A woman's relative ability to maintain order in a male, maximum-security, unclassified penitentiary of the type Alabama now runs could be directly reduced by her womanhood. There is a basis in fact for expecting that sex offenders who have criminally assaulted women in the past would be moved to do so again if access to women were established within the prison. There would also be a real risk that other inmates, deprived of a normal heterosexual environment, would assault women guards because they were women.22 In a prison system where violence is the order

21 See, e. g., Weeks v. Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co., 408 F. 2d 228, 232– 236 (CA5); Bowe v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., supra, at 717-718; Rosenfeld v. Southern Pacific Co., supra.

22 The record contains evidence of an attack on a female clerical worker in an Alabama prison, and of an incident involving a woman student who