Supreme Court rules for white firefighters in promotions

WASHINGTON -- The city of New Haven wrongly discarded the results of a firefighter promotion test after whites outscored blacks and Hispanics, a bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled Monday in a decision likely to impact job practices nationwide.

The 5-4 decision controlled by the court's conservative bloc raises the bar for employers that try to change job tests or other seemingly neutral criteria after they discover the tests disproportionately screen out racial minorities.

The decision, which reverses a lower court decision that had been joined by current Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, elicited an impassioned dissent from the bench from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court said New Haven violated a provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bars discriminatory treatment in hiring and promotion.

New Haven officials had said they were trying to meet the demands of a separate Title VII provision that prohibits tests and others standards that cause a discriminatory impact. The officials said they tossed the results because they believed the test was flawed and they feared lawsuits from the blacks and Hispanics who failed to qualify for promotion.

"The city … turned a blind eye to evidence that supported the exams' validity," Kennedy said, as he declared that the city lacked a "strong basis in evidence" that it had to discard the exam results.

Rejecting the city's assertions about problems with whether the tests truly measured leadership skills, Kennedy added, "Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions."

In her dissent, Ginsburg emphasized the "two pillars" of civil rights law and said the majority had minimized the provision adopted by Congress to ensure that individuals are promoted based on qualifications necessary to do the job.