Too Smart for the Police? The IQ Cap Court Case
In 1999, a Connecticut police department rejected an applicant for scoring too high on a hiring test. A federal appeals court sided with the department. Here is what the case actually decided, and did not.
What you need to know
- Robert Jordan scored 33 out of 50 on the Wonderlic Personnel Test in 1996 — above New London, Connecticut's own interview range of 20 to 27 — and was rejected for scoring too high, not too low.
- Jordan sued under the Equal Protection Clause; both the district court (1999) and the Second Circuit (2000) sided with the city under the lenient rational-basis standard, since the policy applied neutrally to everyone.
- The city's stated reason was reducing turnover among overqualified hires, not a claim that high scorers make worse officers.
- The ruling is narrower than it is often summarized: it upholds one neutrally applied policy under rational-basis review, not a general right for employers to cap test scores under every legal theory.
In 1996, Robert Jordan applied to be a police officer in New London, Connecticut, and took the Wonderlic Personnel Test as part of the hiring process. He scored 33 out of 50 — comfortably above the department's own cutoff for granting an interview. The department did not reject him for scoring too low. It rejected him for scoring too high.
What was the actual policy, and what did Jordan score?
New London only interviewed applicants who scored between 20 and 27 on the Wonderlic. Jordan's 33 sat well above that range — above the median score the test's own publisher lists for police patrol officers, and higher than several supervisory occupations on the same scale. Our guide to converting a Wonderlic score to an IQ estimate covers how a raw score like that maps onto a familiar scale, and why any such conversion should be read as an approximation rather than an exact figure. The department's stated reasoning was retention, not ability: it believed applicants who scored unusually high would find patrol work under-stimulating, leave sooner after training was complete, and take the cost of that training with them.
- Jordan's Wonderlic score: 33 out of 50
- Department's interview range: 20 to 27
- Reason given: reducing turnover among overqualified hires, not ability
- Outcome: summary judgment for the city, affirmed on appeal
What did Jordan argue, and why did he lose?
Jordan sued under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Connecticut Constitution, arguing the city's "upper cut" policy treated him unfairly for a trait — scoring well — that should never count against a candidate. Because Jordan conceded that hiring is not a fundamental right and that high scorers are not a legally protected class, the case was decided under rational basis review, the most permissive standard of judicial scrutiny: a policy survives if the government can show any conceivable rational connection to a legitimate goal, even if the policy is not the fairest or most sensible option available. The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut granted summary judgment for the city on August 29, 1999, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed on August 23, 2000, holding that reducing turnover among overqualified hires was a rational basis for the cutoff, whether or not the underlying assumption about overqualified officers leaving sooner was actually correct.
The same hiring standard was applied to every applicant, regardless of race, sex or any other protected characteristic — which is what let a rational-basis defense succeed.
Is this the same legal theory as a discrimination claim over a hiring test?
No, and the distinction matters for anyone researching this case. Jordan's claim was about how a facially neutral policy affects one individual, evaluated under the lenient rational-basis standard. It is a different legal track from a disparate-impact claim, where a hiring test's pass rate differs by race, sex or another protected characteristic even though the test looks neutral on its face — that theory runs through the four-fifths rule and a substantially stricter body of employment law. Our broader look at whether IQ-style tests are legal for hiring covers both tracks and where each applies.
Is an upper IQ cutoff for hiring still used today?
It is difficult to say how common the practice is now, because most departments and employers that use a maximum score do not publish the threshold, and there is no central registry of hiring-test cutoffs across police departments. What the case actually establishes is narrower than the "too smart to be a cop" headlines that followed it: a rational-basis legal defense succeeded for one department's specific policy, applied neutrally, defended on turnover-cost grounds. It does not establish that every such policy would survive a legal challenge, and it does not address whether the underlying premise — that higher scorers make worse long-term hires — holds up under later research.
Does the science support the department's turnover theory?
The department's underlying assumption — that overqualified hires get bored and leave sooner — has decidedly mixed support in organizational psychology. Some studies do find perceived overqualification associated with lower job satisfaction and higher turnover intentions, but other research finds the effect depends heavily on how an employee subjectively experiences the mismatch, not on the test score itself, and that the relationship weakens once broader job attitudes and person-job fit are accounted for. The court did not have to settle which side of that research is right: rational basis review does not require a policy's underlying premise to be proven correct, only plausible enough to justify a neutrally applied rule.
What does the research say about IQ and job performance generally?
Separately from this case, the weight of industrial-psychology evidence points the other way on the general question: cognitive ability test scores are one of the stronger predictors of job performance across occupations, including more complex roles, and most published research does not support a sharp "too smart to do this job well" effect. The New London policy was defended on turnover risk specifically, a narrower and different question from whether higher-scoring officers perform worse at the job itself.
Where would your own score land?
Want to see where a hiring-test-style score sits on a full IQ scale? Take the IQ Metrics test to check your own result.
Find your IQ score now! →If your own results ever get compared against a workplace test score, our score converter and the IQ test are a reasonable place to start — keeping in mind that any single score, from any test, carries a margin of error.
Common questions
Can a police department legally reject an applicant for scoring too high on a test?
One federal appeals court, in Jordan v. City of New London (2000), held that a neutrally applied upper cutoff survived rational-basis review under the Equal Protection Clause. That is a narrow, case-specific holding, not a blanket rule covering every similar policy.
What score did Robert Jordan get on the Wonderlic test?
33 out of 50 — above New London's own interview range of 20 to 27.
Why did New London set an upper cutoff on the hiring test?
The department said it wanted to reduce turnover, reasoning that applicants who scored unusually high would grow bored with patrol work and leave sooner after the city had paid for their training.
Is an upper-cutoff hiring policy the same legal issue as test bias against a protected group?
No. That is a disparate-impact claim, governed by a different and generally stricter legal standard, including the four-fifths rule — not the equal-protection, rational-basis theory Jordan argued.
Sources for this story
- Jordan v. City of New London, 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 22195 (2d Cir. 2000); 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14289 (D. Conn. 1999) — Second Circuit Court of Appeals / U.S. District Court, District of Connecticut
- Case summary and docket details — Americans for Effective Law Enforcement (AELE)
Corrections: spotted an error? Email corrections@iqmetrics.org and we will update this story and note the change here.
Related stories
All news →Are IQ Tests Legal in Hiring? What the Rules Actually Say
The belief that American employers are banned from testing cognitive ability traces to one 1971 Supreme Court case. That case did not ban testing — it set a condition, and the condition is the part everyone forgets.
The Four-Fifths Rule: How Regulators Flag a Hiring Test for Bias
A cognitive ability test can produce pass rates eight points apart across two groups and clear federal guidelines. Another test can produce an eleven-point gap and fail the same screen. The difference is a ratio, not a point spread — and it is worth calculating yourself.
The OnlineJobs.ph IQ Test: What Hiring Tests Measure and What They Don’t
OnlineJobs.ph’s own test pages could not be opened for this article, so this piece covers what can be checked: how the cognitive tests employers use are built and scored, why a score is not an IQ, and what research says a score predicts.
Read the research.
Then find your own number.
Our IIF-certified assessment reports your score with its scale, percentile and confidence range — and a breakdown of the cognitive domains behind it.
Start IQ Test →