For instance, if you selected for college graduates for hiring firefighters, and that causes a lot of rejected applications among African American candidates, then it would be illegal based off of an adverse impact against a protected group.
As an aside, suing employers over requiring a college degree is a seriously under-tapped and under-estimating way to charitably improve the lives of Americans (college is a positional good because college matters when employers are looking at candidates - if employers can't look at whether or not you have a college degree unless it's a bona-fide qualification, then many more people don't have to spend several years and tens of thousands of dollars)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/213380090/1999-NYC-Firefighter-Wri...
You'd have a hard time convincing me that doing well on it didn't correlate with being a better firefighter.