Supreme Court to Hear Reverse Bias Case
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide a reverse discrimination case challenging a city’s decision to throw out a firefighter promotion test because of poor results for minorities.
Nineteen whites and one Hispanic claim in the consolidated suits that they would have been promoted to firefighter positions of lieutenant and captain if the city of New Haven, Conn., had not scrapped the test, the Associated Press reports. The city maintains it did not violate the equal protection clause because it tossed all the results, no matter what the applicant’s race, the Yale Daily News reports.
The New York City-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the city’s decision “in a ruling with only one substantive paragraph,” according to the Yale Daily News article. The court refused an en banc appeal by a 7-6 vote. The dissenters urged the Supreme Court to hear the case, saying it would be the first constitutional challenge to reach the high court in which test results were thrown out based on the race of high-scoring applicants, the story says.
The case consolidates two appeals both known as Ricci v. DeStefano.
