Gary Pinney,President of the Firebirds,the Black firefighters Association of New Haven you need to explore the possibility of filing a lawsuit on behalf of all Black and Puerto Rican firefighters in the City of New Haven. Black firefighters around the country need to pursue legal actions against those governments that are using tests that have not gone through the proper validation studies before administering said tests.
The U.S. Supreme Court had a mountain of evidence which showed that the test New Haven Used was flawed and racially bias but the court decided that the City Of New Haven could not throw out the test results even though the tests results revealed adverse impact. The EEOC guidelines state that a test with an adverse impact will be considered discriminatory unless the employer conducts a validation study of the test and ,as part of the study,investigates whether there is a suitable alternative selection procedure with lesser adverse impact. The gang of five Justices erred in interpreting Title VII deliberately because they favored the 17 white firefighters over the Black applicants.The majority(Gang of Five) hiding behind those Black robes with invisible white hoods on ruled in favor of the white firefighters thus hacking away at Title VII's disparate impact provision. But Sonia Sotomayor and the majority of the Second Court just followed current law in holding that if New Haven was indeed trying to comply with Title VII as it now stands(and that's what the trial judge found) So the racist gang of four+uncle Thomas changed the law essentially and made their own law in ruling for the white firefighters. Sotomayor was only following existing precedent,under existing law. Sotomayor and the other judges found that the trial judge,Janet Arterton,had written a solid opinion,so they just wrote a short opinion basically saying she got it right.Sonia Sotomayor's job on the Second Court is to follow precedent,not to reach out and make law,and that is what she and the other judges did. The gang of four+Uncle Thomas have made a mockery of the intent of Title VII by making new law. The City Of New Haven invited this lawsuit by the white firefighters with the full knowledge that the test used was not validated. If the City of New Haven had conducted such a study and validated the exams it could have promoted from the list knowing that it had strong defense against any allegation that it had violated Title VII. On the other hand,if the City of New Haven had conducted such a study and found the exams were discriminatory or identified an alternative selection procedure with a lesser adverse impact,it could have canceled the exam without exposing itself to an allegation of racial discrimination by Caucasians who qualified for promotion.
More importantly the City of New Haven should have conducted the validation study after the results came back. Instead,the Corporation counsel,the chief administrative office,speaking for the mayor,and others urged the promotion lists not certified. The Commission,which is appointed by the disingenuous mayor,deadlocked 2-2,so the lists weren't certified. This mayor DeStefano invited this lawsuit on behalf of the Caucasian firefighters,and make no mistake about it DeStefano was silently rooting for the Caucasian firefighters.
The Caucasian firefighters beat the Black firefighters to the punch by outmaneuvering them because of the political shenanigans of the Mayor DeStefano and crew.
The city of New Haven has a long long history like most fire halls in the U.S. of race discrimination in firefighting against Blacks in all the systems of hiring and promotion. Many thousands of people died for the passage of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,which is designed to combat racial discrimination.
Will people of good will sit back and let bigots with Black robes on the highest court of the land take us back to good old days of Homer Plessy ?
No comments:
Post a Comment