Supreme Court Votes in Favor of New Haven Fire Fighters

Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of twenty white New Haven fire fighters who were denied promotions because no black applicants scored high enough on an examination to determine candidates for the positions of sergeant and lieutenant.
The 5-4 decision focused on the inherent contradiction in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race-based hiring and promotional practices, but also requires employers to discard the results of tests if a disparity between races is evident.
Of the 118 candidates who took the test, 27 were black. None of them scored high enough to qualify for a promotion to sergeant of lieutenant, in which 15 positions were available at the time. However, all of the twenty plaintiffs did qualify, but after great debate over the results, the city civil service board of New London opted to discard the results without further explanation.
The highest court’s ruling reversed the verdict of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which at the time, was made by Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s current nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, stating that “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 Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote the minority opinion, stating that the white firefighters “understandably attract this court’s sympathy…but they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotion in preference to them”. Ginsberg also said that until this decision, the civil rights law’s intent of prohibiting intentional discrimination and subsequent disparate impact on individuals or groups in the workplace were complimentary.