CITY OF NEW HAVEN GETS SUED AGAIN
In June, the United States Supreme Court released a 5-4 opinion in the Ricci v. DeStefano case, finding that the City of New Haven discriminated against white and Hispanic firefighters who claimed that they would have been promoted if the City of New Haven had not invalidated the test results because no black candidates scored high enough to be promoted. I wrote in detail on this decision on June 29.
Yesterday, a black firefighter sued New Haven over the same promotion exam taken in 2003 that was the basis of the Ricci decision. Michael Brisco, who has been with the New Haven fire department for 10 years, alleged that he was discriminated against, based on race, because the test improperly gave more weight to the written part of the test than the oral section. He further alleged that the test had a disparate impact on African-Americans since the scoring method was weighted 60 percent on the written portion, and 40 percent on the oral portion. Brisco alleged that he ranked first out of the 77 candidates who took the test on the oral portion, but was only ranked 24th overall due to the fact that more weight was given to the written portion of the test.
Practice Pointer. It will be interesting to follow this case as it winds through he courts over the next several years. The City of New Haven just completed a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and paid untold thousands of dollars in attorney's fees, obtained a Supreme Court decision, and gets sued again over the same test that was given 6 years ago. Sometimes, justice is not swift.
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