Follow up on the firefighters who brought the Ricci case

Posted by marykeating on December 6, 2009 under Race-based discrimination | Be the First to Comment

The Supreme Court surprised and dismayed people across the spectrum of employment law in June when it ruled in the Ricci v. DeStefano case.  In that case, the Supreme Court held that white firefighters were entitled to proceed on their claims that New Haven discriminated against them on the basis of their race.  New Haven scrapped a promotional exam, on the ground that minority applicants scored poorly on the test.  New Haven feared that it would be sued by the non-selected promotional candidates; instead, by ignoring the test results, and refusing to promote from the top of the list down, it was sued by the top scorers.  Employers have been chewing their fingernails since, wondering if there is a way to avoid a lawsuit.

The simple answer is that any test needs to be carefully tailored to the job duties, and narrowing down the candidates most likely to succeed in the job.  There seems to be a huge range of jobs these days that require a bachelor’s degree, for no particular reason.  Does this not weed out sectors of the population less likely to have afforded a college education?  Similarly, the entry or the promotional exam needs to be vetted, or validated.  Does a good score on the test relate to the best attributes of the successful employees?  Does a firefighter really need to read quickly, or are there more important attributes to focus on?

Last week, the city of New Haven has to promote the 14 firefighters who scored well on the challenged 2003 tests.  Justice can be slow, certainly, but these firefighters will advance.  Public employers, especially, will also be more careful in the procedures used to decide who moves up the ranks, and how they should be selected, or trained for their eventual success. I hope that if minority candidates continue to do poorly on written tests, as a group, that employers will use other means of determining the best candidates for the job.