Ricci v. DeStefano: Are We There Yet?

In Ricci v. DeStefano, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New Haven discriminated against Hispanic and white firefighters when it tossed the results of a promotions test. No blacks scored high enough to qualify for promotions, and the city feared disparate impact lawsuits.

Now, the firefighters who qualified for promotions want those promotions. They recently filed the necessary papers to get the ball rolling. As expected, black firefighters want to block the promotion considerations. In responding documents, the losing group said it still had a right to challenge the test’s validity, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling. (Source)

Listen to the black firefighters’ weird reasoning:

“If the city makes such promotions without inquiring into the exams’ validity, then it is making a race-conscious decision to promote those whites who used their skin color as a central, divisive basis for their lawsuit. Regardless, at this juncture, it is clear that the city has used race as a strawman in all sorts of ways to attempt to benefit itself, to the detriment of others.”

The black firefighters seem to imply that skin color is an illegitimate basis for a lawsuit. Racial discrimination claims, by definition, are based on allegations that a person or an entity infringed on the plaintiff’s rights because of the plaintiff’s skin color. In fact, the black firefighters are using their skin color as a central, divisive basis for their lawsuit. There are laws against racial discrimination, so when one is discriminated against based on race, race will be central to the lawsuit.

And lawsuits, by definition, are divisive. So what? The legal system is adversarial.

Sounds silly to me.