5-4 Supreme Court Decision Against New Haven In Discrimination Suit

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

On a 5-4 split vote the Supreme Court ruled that 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 city said its discrimination was to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

This 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.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg desented saying 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.

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 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.

An ironic but not widely discussed issue is exactly why the City, of for that matter any entity, would gather and use racial or gender information at all to make such a judgement rather than expenge it and allow the issue to rest blindly and entirely on merit and skill.If such information is not gathered and used the matter is moot.