by Thomas MacMillan | January 16, 2009 8:04 AM | New Haven Independent
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the New Haven 20, a retired black firefighter warned, then “we’re back to the bad old days, where we’re the last hired and the first fired.”
The subject at hand at Thursday night’s monthly meeting of the NAACP of Greater New Haven was the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the “reverse discrimination” lawsuit filed by 20 New Haven firefighters.
Last week’s announcement came as a blow to the members of the NAACP, who see the Supreme Court’s decision as a potential threat to affirmative action and racial equality in hiring.
A dozen black New Haven firefighters showed up at the meeting, at St. Lukes Church on Whalley Avenue, to seek the support of the NAACP. The group voted to give it.
The lawsuit, Ricci v. DeStefano, was filed in 2004 by one latino and 19 white firefighters who claimed that they were denied promotion on account of their race. The case began in 2003, when the city administered a civil service exam for the promotion of firefighters to the ranks of lieutenant and captain. When white firefighters received the highest scores on the test, the city decided to throw out the results, saying that the exam displayed a racial bias. The so-called “New Haven 20” filed suit, claiming that the city’s decision amounted to race discrimination against white firefighters who should have been promoted. Nineteen of the 20 are white; one is Hispanic.
Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear it, the case has the potential to steer the course of the country’s civil rights history. On one side are people, like the plaintiffs, who argue that affirmative action shouldn’t prevent more qualified people from obtaining jobs — in this case, mostly white firefighters who scored higher on the test. On the other side are people, like the NAACP and black firefighters, who argue that tests are only one, and sometimes not the best, criteria for judging how well someone will perform a job, and shouldn’t become another racial barrier to members of minority groups.
Fairness
When the New Haven 20 celebrated last week at City Hall at the news that the Supreme Court would hear their case. NAACP President James Rawlings did not share their joy.
“Recently on the steps of City Hall, we saw a group of young men happy for all the wrong things,” Rawlings told the meeting, introducing the discussion of the matter.
Donald Day, retired firefighter and former regional director of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters (IABPFF), was asked to give some history. Before warning of a of return to the “bad old days,” he explained that when the city threw out the results of the test, it was obeying federal hiring guidelines designed to ensure against racial bias in civil service examinations.
“If the Supreme Court rules that we can’t use these guidelines anymore, it’ll affect every police officer, every firefighter… every postal worker, every corrections officer,” Day warned. “This will affect blacks and latinos for years to come.”
“This is bigger than New Haven and it’s bigger than the fire department,” Day continued. “It’s about race, but it’s not about race. It’s just about having a fair test.”
“Historically, as African-Americans, we don’t do as well on strictly written exams,” Day said. Oral exams are fairer, he argued, but they’re also more expensive to administer. He said that written exams can’t really determine who will make a good leader. “Some of the worst officers you’ve ever had were ‘book smart’ officers.”
Gary Tinney is president of the Firebirds, the local branch of the IABPFF. He argued that African-American firefighters already face discrimination and cannot afford to see a setback in hiring and promotion.
He mentioned Hamden, where the Firebirds are set to sue the city for not hiring black firefighters. There are nine black firefighters in Hamden, a town where 30 percent of the population is black, Tinney said.
“We cannot get these folks to hire us now,” he said.
Tinney said that the discrimination case has had a polarizing effect on firehouses around the city. “I can walk into firehouses and these guys will walk away from me,” Tinney said.
He mentioned a meeting of the firefighters union, which voted to use its funds to help the New Haven 20 pursue their case. “It was blacks on one side, and whites on the other,” Tinney said. (The Firebirds are suing the union for its funding decision.)
Strategy
The NAACP’s Clifton Graves drafted a resolution in support of the city’s side of the case. It passed unanimously.
Graves said that the NAACP should use a “dual strategy” of forming alliances to appeal to the court as well as working with Congress to pass legislation to “offset” a possibly adverse decision by the Supreme Court. “We need to fight this battle at different levels,” he said.
Rawlings predicted that this would be the first of many battles to be fought against a Supreme Court that is “still a Bush court.”
“They’re looking for any opportunity to roll back the progress we’ve made over the last 100 years,” he said.
Looking at the road ahead, Rawlings said, “It’s going to be hell… Our job may have been ferocious, but now it’s going to be a firestorm.”
After the meeting, Rawlings said that he sees the Supreme Court’s acceptance of the case as part of a larger conservative threat. He said that Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative-action activist, was “behind the screen on this one,” and related the case to the conservative initiatives like the recent Proposition Eight vote in California (banning gay marriage) and the 2006 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.
Rawlings called the meeting’s resolution the first step in a larger fight, one in which the national leadership of the NAACP will be involved. “This is not just a paper exercise,” he said. “National will be the big dog on this one.”
The national NAACP will be filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, and on a local level, the New Haven NAACP will be joining forces with the city of New Haven and the Yale Law School to fight the case.