The U.S. Supreme will hear another firefighters case, but this one won’t garner nearly as much attention. (Source)
Like the New Haven case, the case out of Chicago involves a test. At issue this time around, however, is not the test itself, which was shown to have a disparate impact on blacks. The amount of time job applicants have to file disparate impact claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is in question. Parties have a 300-day window to file complaints, and courts hearing the Chicago case can’t agree whether the complainants met the criteria.
Black applicants claimed discrimination after they disproportionately failed to score high enough to qualify for a job. A federal judge ruled in favor of the applicants, but the appeals court overturned the ruling and tossed the lawsuit, ruling that the applicants waited too long to challenge the test results.
The court in Ricci v. DeStefano tackled the substantive issue of discrimination. The city of New Haven threw out the results of a promotions test because no blacks scored high enough to qualify. The city claimed that had it certified the test results, black firefighters likely would have sued under the disparate impact theory. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against the city, holding that New Haven violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when it discarded the results.
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