RSS
Home
Supreme Court reverses Sotomayor on landmark Ricci case; sides with White New Haven firefighters
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Hallelujah. Justice at last…
With its reversal of Sonia Sotomayor's decision in the landmark Ricci reverse discrimination case, the Supreme Court drove a stake in the heart of "disparate impact" discrimination law theory, so dear to the hearts of liberals and the racial grievance industry. The decades-long pernicious practice of discriminating against Whites on the theory that it is justified in order to remedy past discrimination against blacks no longer has any legal justification.
The argument in support of New Haven's decision not to promote Ricci and other White firefighters who successfully passed the city's "racially-neutral" test on the perverse grounds that an insufficient number of blacks would be promoted was exceptionally weak, morally, legally and intellectually. It is instructive to note that the best, most compelling legal argument offered by the city of New Haven in support of discriminating against Ricci was its fear that they would have to defend against suits by black firefighters.
Justice Anthony Kennedy resoundingly rejected this pretense when he wrote: "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."
Expect wailing from the usual suspects in the racial grievance industry: the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and the post-racial candidate Barack Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder.
The indisputable and compelling facts of the Ricci case underlies one of the reasons why the American public — by large majorities — is opposed to the continued affirmative action practice of race-based preferences in hiring and promotion. It is axiomatic to all but liberals that the way to end race-based discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
That is the clarion call embodied in the Supreme Court's decision.
Update: 6/30/09 After reading the actual Supreme Court decision in Ricci today, the aforementioned statement I made in this article posted yesterday (immediately after news of the decision hit the newswire services) to the effect that, the Court, "drove a stake in the heart of “disparate impact” discrimination law theory…" was far too sweeping an assertion to make in light of the narrow basis for the court's ruling. The court did not explicity rule on the constitutionality of disparate impact theory itself, namely the legality under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of race-conscious remedies for situations where no discriminatory intent is present but nonetheless where the results of employer hiring/and or promotion policies, from a statistical standpoint, dispoportioantely impact minorities.
While the court did not specifically rule on the constitutionality of disparate impact remedies, as Justice Scalia noted in the Ricci decision, the issue cannot be sidesteeped forever.
Related Articles:
Comments
