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Its about time. Always hire for ability and you will never go wrong.
WASHINGTON – 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.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Sotomayor should not be criticized for the unsigned appeals court decision, which he asserted she did not write. "Judge Sotomayor and the lower court panel did what judges are supposed to do, they followed precedent," said the Vermont Democrat who will preside over Sotomayor's confirmation hearings next month.
Leahy also called the high court decision "cramped" and wrong.
In New Haven, Nancy Ricci, whose son, Frank, was the lead plaintiff on the lawsuit, carried a large cake decorated with red, white and blue frosting into the law office where the firefighters were celebrating their victory.
Ricci's father, Jim Ricci said the ruling is a victory for firefighters across the country. "Now we're going to get the best managers as far as firefighters go. That's really important," Ricci said.
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.
"The city could be liable for disparate-impact discrimination only if the examinations were not job related" or the city failed to use a less discriminatory alternative, Kennedy said. "We conclude that there is no strong basis in evidence to establish that the test was deficient in either of these respects."
But Ginsburg said the court should have assessed "the starkly disparate results" of the exams against the backdrop of historical and ongoing inequality in the New Haven fire department. As of 2003, she said, only one of the city's 21 fire captains was African-American.
Until this decision, Ginsburg said, the civil rights law's prohibitions on intentional discrimination and disparate impact were complementary, both aimed at ending workplace discrimination.
"Today's decision sets these paired directives at odds," she said.
Its about time. Always hire for ability and you will never go wrong.
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Dammit, you beat me to it. Heard it at 8:01 local time on the radio. A little over a half hour ago on my way home from work. Yes liberals, before Rush or Sean could tell me how to think.
I was going to find the Sodomyer thread, and add it there however.
Umm.. I don't think anybody was hoping for otherwise. It was pretty apparent that this was going to be reversed. Good.
Well, some people and judges seem to thing it's fair to ignore the most qualified when he or she not a black.
ok then... tell me how you think this will effect her bid for SC. Should it hold a lot of water?
People will bring it up, it will be relatively ignored. In the end, I suspect that this will prove some talking points, but unless people provide a pattern of poor decision making, which IMO she likely has (after all, its someone Obama likes, they've all been bad so far
I think so, but not as much as I'd like. This was a very bad decision, but four of the SC agreed with her. I'm not going to take the time right now to explain why, except the decision of the Fire department was obviously race motivated, and factually shown as such. I'm like to say I'm surprised it wasn't a unanimous decision, but I'm not.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...cci/index.htmlThe irony of using Ricci against Sotomayor has always been that the reason this case resonates for so many people is due to empathy for the white firefighters.
That irony is underscored by today's ruling, as Justice Kennedy devotes multiple paragraphs at the beginning of his opinion to highlighting all of the facts (as opposed to legal arguments) which make people sympathetic to Ricci. Conversely, Justice Ginsburg, writing for the dissenters, noted upfront that the white firefighters "understandably attract this Court's sympathy," but it must be the law -- i.e., long-standing legal precedent and the purpose of le VII of the Civil Rights Act -- which determines the outcome.
From the start, those protesting Sotomayor's decision in Ricci did so by appealing not to law, but to emotion, non-legal precepts of "fairness" and empathy -- at the very same time that those very same people mocked the notion that those considerations should play any role in judicial decision-making
I like the way you verify information. How much do you rely on that liberal propaganda site?
There were clear reports otherwise. I'm sure the media hyped up the parts they wanted, but the case did revolve around the law. Sodomyer did like any responsible activist judge would, and found a way to rule with agenda based ideals.
She's going to be on the SC, so what's the big deal?
It's fairly clear Sotomayor relied on legal precedent in Ricci.
I rely on Greenwald for his fearless criticism of Obama, for example. His concern about civil liberties in the USA didn't go into dormancy after election day.
At least Alex Koppelman make a more accurate article. In War Room, part of the 6/29 entry:Such affirmative action cases everywhere in the past several years have clearly set the precedent that such actions are out right illegal.The case stems from a test given to firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who were seeking promotion; the results of the test would have meant 13 out of 15 available promotions would go to whites, two to Hispanics and none to African Americans. Because of the lack of racial balance, the city elected to throw out the test and try to come up with some more equitable system.
Too bad the appeals courts aren't as smart as you.
Last edited by Winehole23; 06-29-2009 at 03:39 PM. Reason: I was partially mistaken; the SC minority opinion cuts against that of the lower courts
I've been reading the ruling also. I didn't read that point, but I'll bet it was referring to having to show cases that could not be shown. Here are some things I noted:
Here is the Supreme Court decision:
RICCI ET AL. v. DESTEFANO ET AL. Selected passages:
Contrary to the Salon article you didn't verify facts on, they did cite law. le VII and the 14th amendment.Pe ioners, white and Hispanic firefighters who passed the exams but were denied a chance at promotions by the City’s refusal to certify the test results, sued the City and respondent officials, alleging that discarding the test results discriminated against them based on their race in violation of, inter alia, le VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The defendants responded that had they certified the test results, they could have faced le VII liability for adopting a practice having a disparate impact on minority firefighters. The District Court granted summary judgment for the defendants, and the Second Circuit affirmed.
Held: The City’s action in discarding the tests violated le VII. Pp. 16–34.
The above is where the exception of you quote doesn't work with this case.(c) The City’s race-based rejection of the test results cannot satisfy the strong-basis-in-evidence standard. Pp. 26–34.
Fear of litigation alone cannot justify the City’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions. Discarding the test results was impermissible under le VII, and summary judgment is appropriate for pe ioners on their disparate-treatment claim. If, after it certifies the test results, the City faces a disparate-impact suit, then in light of today’s holding the City can avoid disparate-impact liability based onthe strong basis in evidence that, had it not certified the results, it would have been subject to disparate-treatment liability. Pp. 33–34.The suit alleges that, by discarding the test results, the City and the named officials discriminated against the plaintiffs based on their race, in violation of both le VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. §2000e et seq., and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Scalia underlines the tension between "disparate impact" and "equal protection. (pp.39-41)
Alito accuses New Haven of bad faith; using le VII as a fig leaf for racial quotas.(p 42)
Ginsberg, writing for the minority suggests the New Haven commissioners had good reason to think the first test was flawed. (She also slams the majority's equal protection precedents as *inapposite*, and suggests their strong basis in evidence standard is arbitrary.) (p. 55)
In codifying the Griggs and Albemarle instructions, Congress declared unambiguously that selection criteria operating to the disadvantage of minority group members can be retained only if justified by business necessity. In keeping with Congress’ design, employers who reject such criteria due to reasonable doubts about their reliability can hardly be held to have engaged in discrimination“because of” race. A reasonable endeavor to comply with the law and to ensure that qualified candidates of all races have a fair opportunity to compete is simply not what Congress meant to interdict. I would therefore hold that an employer who jettisons a selection device when its disproportionate racial impact becomes apparent does not violate le VII’s disparate-treatment bar automatically or at all, subject to this key condition: The employer must have good cause to believe the device would not withstand examination for business necessity.
I read enough of the majority opinion, and skipped to the dissent long before finishing it. I cannot believe how laughable Ginsberg starts this. Here is one passage:My God. If she goes on like this, she is a more serious problem than I thought. She is justifying illegal means to rectify past wrongs. Apply the past to the present. I hope she starts to make sense at some point.The Court’s recitation of the facts leaves out important parts of the story. Firefighting is a profession in which the legacy of racial discrimination casts an especially long shadow. In extending le VII to state and local govern-ment employers in 1972, Congress took note of a U. S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) report finding racial discrimination in municipal employment even “more pervasive than in the private sector.” H. R. Rep. No. 92– 238, p. 17 (1971). According to the report, overt racism was partly to blame, but so too was a failure on the part of municipal employers to apply merit-based employment principles.
An interesting take on this:
http://www.slate.com/id/2220927/entry/2221759/
Moreover, reading the opinions makes clear that the court's five-justice majority is adopting a new standard. Justice Kennedy's opinion for the court says, "For the foregoing reasons, we adopt the strong-basis-in-evidence-standard … to resolve any conflict between the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions of le VII." Both the majority and dissenting opinions seem to agree that this represents the adoption of a new standard. (Justice Ginsburg, speaking in dissent from the bench, called it "novel.") As a court of appeals judge, Sotomayor was obligated to apply the law at the time of her decision. She did so.
Yes, but other cited law makes it clear that the test must be shown to be flawed rather than assumed before it can be thrown out. The facts outlined say that this was never done.
Please, search what your are reading before you quote someones propaganda. That passage goes on to say:As we explain below, because respondents have not met their burden under le VII, we need not decide whether a legitimate fear of disparate impact is ever sufficient to justify discriminatory treatment under the Cons ution.
My personal feeling is there's a good faith legal dispute here, albeit one with real world, political consequences. There's highly plausible arguments on both sides IMO. That's part of why a case like this reaches the SC.
Even if one side or the other (or both) are *agenda driven* at heart, neither side's pleading strikes me as incompetent or even as obviously biased.
Ginzberg:Look at what this crazy lib is saying. She is clearly dissenting for racial reasons, not reasons of merit.Only one of the Department’s 21 fire captains is African-American. See App. in No. 06–4996–cv (CA2), p. A1588 (hereinafter CA2 App.). It is against this backdrop of entrenched inequality that the promotion process at issue in this litigation should be assessed.
Well, you seem to have made up your mind well before finishing.
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