Attorneys for New York City have asked that Brooklyn federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis be removed from the case that-shall-never-end for bias against white firefighters.
Garaufis appointed an independent monitor to oversee FDNY’s efforts to increase so-called diversity in the department, which the judge called “a stubborn bastion of white male privilege.” About four million of the city’s eight million people identify as racial minorities, but blacks and Hispanics account for only nine percent of firefighters. This, according to liberals, is a tragedy for which the city should lower standards and hire based on race.
In 2007, the Department of Justice under George W. Bush filed suit against the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) for violating the Civil Rights Act, claiming that two pass-fail written exams and the rank ordering process disparately impacted minorities and weren’t job-related or consistent with business necessity. The Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of black FDNY firefighters, joined the lawsuit.
Two years later, Garaufis ruled that FDNY discriminated against blacks and Hispanics with a recruitment exam used between 1999 and 2007. The same judge later ruled that New York City intentionally discriminated against minorities by continuing to use the exam. The judge proposed that the department hire black and Hispanic applicants who scored lower than whites, and the city rejected it.
Merit Matters, a group that opposes race-based hiring in the fire department, filed an amicus brief (38 pages in PDF) in support of the city attorney’s brief.
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Brooklyn federal judge Nicholas Garaufis is yet another jurist who conflates “equal opportunity” with “equal outcomes.” He also perpetuates the wide-spread intellectual dishonesty of “diversity” to justify the absurd notion that the number of minorities employed in a public agency (e. g. FDNY) must match the racial demographics of the general populace.
America is tired of color-coding its citizenry and of the worn concept of “white privilege.” I hope the amicus brief by “Merit Matters” will help remove Judge Garaufis from this case so that true fairness in emplyment — fairness based on achievement –can take its course.
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