"The test results would have given 13 of the promotions to white candidates, perhaps two to Hispanics, and none to African-Americans"

What are the other five? Could 25% of the firefighter pool in New Haven really be Asian? That doesn't seem right.

Especially given this fact: "New Haven, by contrast, is 44 percent white, about one-third black, and about one-quarter Hispanic."

Jeez, who even knew this was an option: "Frank Ricci has an uncle and two brothers who are firefighters. He studied fire science at college."

This is an ugly fact: "That network, Tinney and other Firebirds say, explains why the union, which represents all of the city's firefighters, has used its dues to support the Ricci plaintiffs." Why would they do that?

The city had also agreed to two demands from the union—the same union that has come down repeatedly on the side of Frank Ricci. Written questions would count for 60 percent of the total. And they were ranked by exact score, rather than rounded into categories spanning, say, five-point differences, like letter grades. And under the city's charter, only the top three scorers for any given position could be promoted into it. These rules look race-neutral. But they contributed to the city's inability to promote African-Americans and most Hispanics. "That is a critical issue. People gloss over it. But it makes the exam hard to defend," New Haven Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden says.

I don't understand why this makes the exam hard to defend.

This is hard to have an opinion about when I can't (a) see the questions on the test, or (b) hear any real discussion of the questions on the test.

How do I decide if the test is accurately determining the best firefighters in the least discriminatory manner without knowing anything about the test itself?

You could just not have an opinion about it. It's working pretty well for me.

"...the results of a 2003 exam for 15 captain and lieutenant promotions."

15 = 13 whites and 2 hispanics. Not sure why you thought it was 20.

"I don't understand why this makes the exam hard to defend."

It makes it hard to defend against Title VII, which has the fairly straightforward metric that if something has a "disparate impact," then it is violating the law. So regardless of what the actual questions say (although the article does say that they were for "fire buffs"), if it ends up only passing white people, it is a bad (legally) test. Stating it that way does sound ridiculous, but I think there's an implicit understanding in the Civil Rights Act that there is historically a lot of discrimination against minorities and thus it is better to avoid disparate impacts than to give those things that cause them the benefit of the doubt. This is of course what's at risk of being undermined on Monday -- the right wing of SCOTUS might just find Title VII unconstitutional. (I don't know enough constitutional law to defend Title VII, but I know that I generally like it historically.)

The important thing to understand here is that the city *knew* that if they kept the test results, they would've been subject to a lawsuit, and I guess they reasoned they had a better chance winning this current lawsuit.

"How do I decide if the test is accurately determining the best firefighters in the least discriminatory manner without knowing anything about the test itself?"

It's not possible, but the article does point to another method that is being used in other departments that hasn't shown to be discriminatory so far. So that would seem like the right thing to do. (It does seem very stupid to me to use memorization tests for the sole determinant of promotions anyway.)

The other system that promotes higher percentages of minority candidates may be inferior in terms of quality of results. In fact, I suspect that the alternate system that is based on interviews and "group discussions" (whatever that meant), probably has racial equality as a primary motivating goal (and most definitely would if it were adopted in New Haven after this mess) rather than merely finding the best firefighters. Taking away discretion due to negative results was the reason that we implemented blind civil service tests, and it would be shame to move backwards in this area. If the test itself is somehow biased, or is not promoting the most qualified firefighters, then change should be required. But if the test is accurately promoting the best firefighters, and alternate systems would provide inferior results, I don't see any problem... even under Title VII.

I've done no research on this point, but it was my understanding that the alternative had to achieve the goals of the system as well as the presumptively racist option, but be less discriminatory. If the alternative does not adequately promote the most qualified firefighters, then it loses under Title VII, right?

I need some sort of compare/contrast study on the two tests. Qualified-ness of firefighters versus racially discriminatory results.

Not sure where I got 20 from. Odd. Sorry about that one.

Well, sure, if an alternative is outright bad at promoting good firefighters, than that system would have to be rejected as well. But it's not as if there's one single alternative to contend with -- I would guess that the alternative discussed in the article is one that has shown particular success for both criteria, but yeah that's just a guess.

But nevertheless, without any research at all, my bias is actually toward an alternative system that involves interviews and such. I just can't imagine a straight memorization test being a suitable metric for promoting firefighters -- it's hardly the one skill they need. And take this from someone who is very good at memorization tests -- they have limited usefulness.

As someone who has had some brief experience fighting wildland fires and going through training, I can make a few comments that might be of value. Granted, wildland fires are different than structural fires, but I would think many of the job needs would be relevant to one another.

Although it's not relevant to how the case is decided, the Assessment Center idea for promotions makes much more sense for the job of firefighting. Both knowledge gained from classes and on the ground are important. You can know what you should do in a given scenario, but ultimately some people are better able to put out a fire than others with hand tools, etc... The ability to communicate well with other people is definitely a key trait for strong leadership as well within firefighters.

Under this basis of common-sense alone, I think the case should be ruled in favor of the city (the decision should be upheld). I don't think that based on the information available in this series of these articles that it's hard to find a reason to not suggest that the minorities for countless reasons might have been at a disadvantage to prepare adequately for these exams, or have the ability to perform well on the test.

It's hard not to sympathize with the white firefighters though. I think the city should compensate them for their legal fees and the extra money they would have earned from the promotions up to this point (the legal fees might be expensive, but the other part shouldn't be too much). Then they should simply have a new method to promote people.

I'm not a legal buff so I have no idea if what I propose would actually be possible in a ruling.

RD, your obsession with getting the "best" seems to be at the heart of the philosophical question that underlies Title VII.

The Firebirds see the family ties of men like Heins and Ricci as part of a network of influence that only white firefighters can tap into.... The consulting company that the city hired to write the exams based them on interviews with officers and the chief of the New Haven department, job questionnaires, and 1,200 pages of reading material. The reading was later announced along with the date of the test, giving applicants a sense of what they should study. But Tinney says that white firefighters had access to this information earlier—through a "network" of friends, family, instructors of the extra training courses they'd taken, and connections at testing companies.

The entire concern behind laws like Title VII is that as a society we still define "best" by metrics that tend to replicate status quo and rooted traditions of privilege. I am skeptical that there is ANY objective way of finding the "best" firefighters, just like I doubt that my classmates at Harvard were the most deserving - they were just a bunch of rich, entitled douchebags with a pro-establishment bent: and that goes for minorities there as recipients of "diversity policies", not just the white kids, because Harvard was clever enough to rejigger diversity in a meaningless way. But I'm sure Harvard admissions staff thought their admittees were the "best," because they scored well on LSATs like they were trained to; they had friends with lawyerly history & instincts read their essays; they had a sense of the culture.

I am the anti-Ayn Rand. I think this whole concept of "best" is a kind of hilarious and delusional, and rooted in this idea we deserve what we get. Very few people really have to work hard to get the preordained privilege they think is so uniquely theirs. My dad is a machinist (no high school degree). The way the guys in his shop insult each other is far more intellectually stimulating than some of the pap I heard my fellow law students self-importantly spewing day in day out. The idea that you or I is a lawyer because we're smarter, because we uniquely DESERVE it, is a fucking joke. Try being a waitress and remembering 20 refill drink orders. I bet that would be harder work for either of us, but our soft-handed, test-creaming histories save us from having to try. We just sit around and regurgitate eloquence in a way we've been socially conditioned to do, and then we can crow about being the best of society because we work so hard. Utter crap.

So, given that I think 'best' is subjective and simply something we redefine given our current cultural preferences, the question is really what we value in a firefighting society. And I value a firehouse such that, when my house is on fire, no one is hiding the black dude's boots so he can't get on the truck in time and my grandmother dies. So let's eradicate this white privilege bullshit, which undeniably exists in New Haven culture as WE ALL know well and fucking good from growing up in those parts. Making sure that stupid multichoice tests don't mindlessly replicate the subtle cultural overtones that no longer do us any good is a great start.

So fuck "best." It's an elusive goal romanticized by people with a very ulterior motive: to support their own sense of worth - it's like religion. Fuck Ayn Rand. Give me the spot-on philosophy of Trading Places any day.

Cheers, flea! How can people possibly accept that only white people get promoted? Shouldn't that be considered a failure of the (white) leadership if they are unable to train black cadet firefighters well enough to rise in the ranks? Tests are always flawed and the best decisions in the classroom are made with a combination of assessments, so I don't see why that wouldn't apply here.

My #1 suggestion would be to give the test orally to eliminate some of the bias. We don't need someone to write their way out of a fire, what we really need is people who can think quickly on their feet when their colleague yells out that the fire seems to be in the wiring or chemically-based, etc. Community outreach and prevention is also a huge aspect of being a firefighter, so reflecting that community seems key.

Reading about this case had led me to two conclusions:
1. The city of New Haven didn't have a lot of good choices. Well, where good = not likely to lead to getting sued.
2. Firefighters probably shouldn't take written tests anyway. As Annie sorta said, you can't write your way out of a fire.

No, New Haven didn't have a lot of good choices once the test results came in, but I think they deserved getting a lawsuit of one kind or another for choosing that testing method in the first place. I think they are likely now to get hit by another lawsuit from the black firefighters, so this will likely end up in the courts again.

I wrote above: "This is of course what's at risk of being undermined on Monday -- the right wing of SCOTUS might just find Title VII unconstitutional."

I gave them the benefit of the doubt -- but only Scalia had the integrity to argue that Title VII may be unconstitutional. The rest of the right-wing branch instead made up a new standard for Title VII complaints, saying that New Haven didn't have enough evidence to throw out the test results. In my view, as we've hashed out above, that's a total bullshit approach, and that's what Ginsberg's dissent is all about.

Trading Places is a good movie.