Judiciary

FDNY’s $3.3 Million Exam

August 23, 2011

Have you ever wondered why the government requires exams for certain government jobs? State and local governments developed the competitive civil service system, modeled on the national system, to eliminate patronage and establish hiring and promoting based on objective criteria. The exams measure reading, writing, and reasoning, but because blacks score disproportionately lower than other [...]

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FDNY Case: Follow the Logic

August 18, 2011

A federal court in New York is hearing testimony in a case against the New York City Fire Department (FDNY). I’ve blogged about the FDNY “bias” case several times, so I won’t reinvent the microchip. Read the background here. Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that the FDNY discriminated against blacks and Hispanics with a recruitment exam [...]

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Michael Briscoe’s Suit Goes Forward

August 17, 2011

You may recall Michael Briscoe, a black New Haven firefighter suing the city for discrimination. He claimed the department’s promotions exam had a disparate impact on blacks, that giving more weight to the written part of the exam over the oral was a race-based disadvantage. The written portion was weighted 60 percent and the oral [...]

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Racial Preferences: New Court, New Decisions?

August 9, 2011

Eight years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy dissented in Grutter v. Bollinger, the case that upheld “plus factor” racial preferences. In 2003, Kennedy and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor were the swing votes on the U.S. Supreme Court. O’Connor is gone, and now the court has a conservative bloc of four justices (as opposed to three in [...]

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Admissions, Race, and the Courts

August 2, 2011

It seems inevitable that “affirmative action,” aka racial preferences, will return to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court’s eight-year-old decisions Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger haven’t stopped tax-supported schools from using broad preferences policies or the lower courts from rendering conflicting decisions. Part of the problem was the court’s capitulation in allowing tax-supported [...]

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New Haven Firefighters to Receive Damages

July 28, 2011

In 2009, Frank Ricci and 13 other New Haven firefighters received promotions after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city had discriminated against them when it tossed the results of a promotions exam because too few blacks passed. (Take a breath!) This week, city officials announced that the firefighters will receive $2 million in [...]

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Will Full Court Re-Hear Michigan Case?

July 27, 2011

As expected, Michigan’s attorney general will ask the full Sixth Circuit to re-hear a three-judge panel decision to nullified the voters’ will to bar their government from granting preferences to or discriminating against individuals or groups in employment, contracting, and education based on race. Earlier this month, the panel ruled that a law against racial [...]

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Racial Neutrality ‘Impermissibly Burdens’ Blacks

July 21, 2011

Tell that to the “coloreds” who had to go through a different door because they were black. Racial preferences opponents and perhaps a few fence-sitters are stunned by the Sixth Circuit panel’s decision to overturn Michigan’s voter-approved law requiring racial neutrality in government employment, contacting, and education. The way people have opposed such a simple [...]

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The Detroit News Respects the Law

July 14, 2011

Although the Detroit News opposed Proposal 2, the measure that barred the state from granting preferences to or discriminating against individuals or groups based on race in employment, hiring, and education, the publication opposes the Sixth Circuit’s recent decision that invalidated the law. An excerpt (emphasis added): “Courts should not strike down ballot initiatives simply [...]

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Is Race-Neutral Government At Risk in California?

July 12, 2011

Here’s a shocker: California governor Jerry Brown supports the lawsuit against the state’s constitutional amendment that mandates racial neutrality in government employment, contacting, and education. In Coral Construction v. City Of San Francisco, a case in which two contractors challenged San Francisco’s race-based preferential treatment ordinance, Brown submitted a letter in favor of the discriminatory [...]