sotomayor! Weez b winning one!

Court rules for white firefighters over promotions

06/29/2009 7:54:21 AM

By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press Writer

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

Kennedy's opinion made only passing reference to the work of Sotomayor and the other two judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld a lower court ruling in favor of New Haven.

But the appellate judges have been criticized for producing a cursory opinion that failed to deal with "indisputably complex and far from well-settled" questions, in the words of another appeals court judge, Sotomayor mentor Jose Cabranes.

"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes said, in a dissent from the full 2nd Circuit's decision not to hear the case.

Monday's decision has its origins in New Haven's need to fill vacancies for lieutenants and captains in its fire department. It hired an outside firm to design a test, which was given to 77 candidates for lieutenant and 41 candidates for captain.

Fifty six firefighters passed the exams, including 41 whites, 22 blacks and 18 Hispanics. But of those, only 17 whites and two Hispanics could expect promotion.

The city eventually decided not to use the exam to determine promotions. It said it acted because it might have been vulnerable to claims that the exam had a "disparate impact" on minorities in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The white firefighters said the decision violated the same law's prohibition on intentional discrimination.

Kennedy said an employer needs a "strong basis in evidence" to believe it will be held liable in a disparate impact lawsuit. New Haven had no such evidence, he said.

The city declined to validate the test after it was given, a step that could have identified flaws or determined that there were no serious problems with it. In addition, city officials could not say what was wrong with the test, other than the racially skewed results.

JonR

Once again, she is overruled.

2. Won't matter. She'll be shoveled in. She could even be a member of the KKK at this point.

Good ruling. Any discrimination is wrong, no matter who is in the minority or majority.

#1,2 Every judge below the U.S. Supreme Court gets overruled during his/her career. While I agree her decision (and that of her colleagues) should have been overturned, as it was, I'd be surprised if any justice on the court hadn't been overruled a few times if they sat as a judge on a lower court. A 5-4 decision hardly screams "you blew that call by a mile".

Ginsburg's dissent contains some specious rationale. "...understandably attract this court’s sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

They didn't have a vested right to the promotion because the decision to yank the test results meant it was taken away from them. Those who didn't pass the test certainly had no right to a promotion for which they didn't qualify either. No one else was promoted in their place because the defendant was changing the rules of the game after it had already been played. I'd have voted to overturn that ruling, too.

Maybe I am reading something other than a head line.

To me the decision was soley a statement against the city saying that they didn't have a basis to think they would be sued.

No winner. Didn't see this as a "reverse racism" issue at all. Seemed like paranoid reasoning from a overly liberal city.

Whatever.

Either way, the city was likely to get sued. Toss the results, you get this case. Don't toss them, someone sues because only white guys passed. This way the city at least can say "hey, we tried...court made us accept the results".

What is also odd is that people think 77 candidates is even enough to support any statistics. With a number that low, the data is pretty useless.

Now I could see it be usefull in a large city where there were 700 candidates.

Geez, do they have to print the tests in Spanish, Ebonish, and every other conceivable language and idiom on earth? If a person cannot pass a standardized test in English, why are they applying? How about having a supervisor who can only speak Lower Slobbovian? That will work out very well when coordinating emergency response.

Political correctness run amok is what this is.

I agree with pacman - either way, the city was going to get sued.

So, in that event, the city should always default to sh*tting on the white, heterosexual male. Its the only safe choice.