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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > July > 07 > Entry
Editorial: Rules on police/fire diversity change too late for Dayton
A new U.S. Supreme Court decision about promoting firefighters in New Haven, Conn., raises questions about whether Dayton would ever have been confronted by the U.S. Justice Department last year if the court had acted sooner.
The Feds wanted to penalize Dayton because the city accepted the results of a test for police job applicants that resulted in almost no minority candidates making the cut. The two levels of government reached a settlement which included Dayton putting up $450,000 for disappointed applicants.
If the city had gone to court, it would have been in an odd position.
It would have been fighting against federal pressure to diversify its safety forces, even though the city commission strongly favors more diversity. The city just hasn’t found a way to achieve that. It certainly didn’t want a hot, racially tinged court battle.
How it would have fared in court cannot be known. But the Justice Department certainly knew the legal lay of the land.
Now the lay of the land has changed.
The New Haven Civil Service Board had decided not to abide by the results of a test for promotion of firefighters to lieutenant and captain. The test had resulted in almost no black or Hispanic promotions. A fair number of minorities had passed, but promotions only went to the highest scorers.
The firefighters who would have been promoted under the test sued. New Haven responded to that suit, in part, by saying that it felt it would have been sued by the other side if it had abided by the test results.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week, 5-4, that the city’s fear of a lawsuit wasn’t sufficient reason for rejecting the results. The majority said there had to be concrete reasons — independent of the test scores — for suspecting the test was a bad one. However, judges at two lower levels (including Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor) had accepted the city’s rationale.
And, writing for the Supreme Court minority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the civil service board seemed to honestly think that using the test would violate prevailing court decisions. After all, earlier courts had held that policies that result in “disparate impact” on racial groups can be judged prejudicial, even in the absence of prejudicial intent.
She noted that many jurisdictions achieve reasonable police and fire diversity by downplaying written tests. Instead, they put people into various scenarios and see how they respond. She said written tests may say more about access to education and to various forms of help in preparing than about fitness for a specific job.
At any rate, the question arises: Would the fed have sought the financial settlement if this year’s ruling had been in place earlier? To do so would have put Justice in a legal posture similar to New Haven’s — rejecting a test because of the outcome.
So we have a neat little irony: A city government run by liberals found itself having to pay a penalty that it might not have faced if the conservative Supreme Court had acted sooner.
Irony aside, the important question here is whether the court’s new direction is the best for racial progress. The jury’s still out. On the surface, the decision seems to make life harder for cities that want — as they should want — to achieve a reasonable degree of diversity in various safety-forces jobs.
But the response of those cities to the decision might be to move away from reliance on written tests. That might not be all bad.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Civil Rights, Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Martin Gottlieb
Comments
By nevermind
July 7, 2009 12:06 PM | Link to this
Too late? Oh, really. I haven’t seen this “settlement” on the Commission calendar yet, or even approved by a federal judge, which is not likely, now that the Supremes have ruled. When is the hearing set on the proposed settlement anyway, or is the DDN afraid to publish that? Clearly this was all in the works when a certain Commissioner invited the lawsuit - and soon!By bobby
July 7, 2009 3:28 PM | Link to this
What criteria do you suggest replace written tests. Racial progress should not be measured by methods that deny merit over race. Should you disagree with this, editors,I suggest you resign your position for a deserving minority.By Rob
July 7, 2009 4:03 PM | Link to this
Gee, I wonder why city employees would want to leave the city limits???By Firefighter's ABC's
July 29, 2009 2:04 AM | Link to this
Visit www.FirefightersABCs.comto learn more about diversity within the fire service.