Is this a bombshell decision or what?
In light of the heat that U.S. Supreme Court Justice candidate Judge Sonia Sotomayo took for her decision in a so-called reverse discrimination lawsuit involving the New Haven Fire Department, and the reverberations regarding Harvard Distinguished Professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge Police Department, one has to wonder the direction of  the news and news commentary of the main stream news media regarding this decision.
Below is legal information provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights regarding the case. The center was involved in the lawsuit. The decision was rendered July 22. I wonder why there was a delay in this seeing the light of day in the public arena.
United States of America and Vulcan Society, Inc. v. City of New York
Synopsis
United States, et al. v City of New York is a federal class action lawsuit originating from two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charges filed by CCR on behalf of the Vulcan Society and three individual African-American firefighter applicants, charging the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) with racially discriminatory hiring practices.
Status
On September 25, 2007, the Vulcans and Messrs. Haywood, Nunez, and Gregg officially intervened as plaintiffs in the Department of Justice (DOJ) Lawsuit. Over the next thirteen months, the parties engaged in extensive fact and expert discovery, which closed on October 31, 2008. On February 23, 2009, the Vulcans and the three individual plaintiffs, as well as the DOJ, moved for summary judgment on their Title VII disparate impact claims. Oral argument on the summary judgment motions and the Vulcans and individual plaintiffs’ motion to certify a class was held before United States District Judge Nicholas Garaufis on March 19, 2009, at 2:30pm, at the United States District Courthouse in Brooklyn.
Description
United States v. City of New York is a class action lawsuit that originates from two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charges filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of the Vulcan Society, the fraternal organization of Black firefighters, in August 2002, and on behalf of three Black firefighter applicants, Marcus Haywood, Candido Nunez and Roger Gregg, in February 2005. The lawsuit charges the FDNY with discriminatory hiring practices that violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the United States and New York State constitutions, and New York State Human Rights Law.
The EEOC attempted an informal resolution of the dispute between the parties. However, conciliation attempts failed when the City would not come to the table, and the EEOC referred the charge to the DOJ, a standard procedure when an EEOC charge is brought against a public employer. The DOJ then filed a lawsuit against the City which the Vulcan Society and CCR have since become a party of.
When the first EEOC charge was filed in 2002, New York City’s fire department was 2.9 percent Black. The numbers have not changed at all since then, despite the fact that the City has had five years to try to remedy the problem. As of March 2007, the FDNY included 335 Black firefighters out of a total of approximately 11,500 firefighters, still barely more than 2.9 percent. New York City as a whole, by comparison, is 27 percent Black.
New York City also has the least diverse fire department of any major city in America – only 7.4 percent Black and Latino. Fifty-seven percent of Los Angeles’ firefighters, 51 percent of Philadelphia’s, and 40 percent of Boston’s are people of color. The fire departments are 30 percent Black in Baltimore and 23 percent Black in Chicago.
The central issue in the case is whether the skills measured by the FDNY’s written exam have any relationship to skills necessary to be a good firefighter – the EEOC and DOJ have concluded that they do not. CCR contends that there is no reason the City should be using this test to hire firefighters and that continuing to use it is against the law.
The DOJ and CCR are seeking relief for Black and Latino candidates who were not hired or whose hiring was delayed because of the use of the written tests given in 1999 and 2002, scores from which were used to rank candidates for hiring. Because this test, which has no valid relationship to job skills, has a disparate impact on Blacks and Latinos, its use by the FDNY is illegal under Title VII. Remedies will be decided by the court, but CCR believes they will include forcing the FDNY to hire affected Black and Latino candidates and give them back pay and retroactive seniority.
Timeline
On April 9, 2002, the Vulcan Society filed a federal EEOC complaint against the New York City Fire Department, charging the FDNY with discriminatory hiring practices.
In August 2002, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed EEOC charges on behalf of the Vulcan Society and served as adjudicatory in this case.
On February 23, 2005, CCR filed a second EEOC charge on behalf of three Black firefighter applicants, Marcus Haywood, Candido Nunez and Roger Gregg.
On November 29, 2005, the EEOC issued a determination in favor of the individual firefighter applicants, stating that “the difference in pass/fail rates is highly statistically significant.” The determination went on to say, “the test’s impact on those who passed shows that the distribution of Blacks by scoring band is the opposite of the distribution of whites … the higher the score, the smaller the proportion of Blacks. … 2.6 percent of the top scoring band was Black, while 86.5 percent of it was white.”
On May 21, 2007, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, United States of America v. City of New York, against the City of New York.
On July 11, 2007, the Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA) intervened in the DOJ lawsuit on the side of the city.
On July 17, 2007, CCR filed to intervene in the DOJ lawsuit on behalf of the Vulcan Society and Messrs. Haywood, Nunez and Gregg
On September 5, 2007, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York granted the motion to intervene.
On September 25, 2007, The Vulcans and the three individuals officially intervened as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
On April 25, 2008, The vulcans and the individual plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification.
On February 23, 2009, The Vulcans, the individual plaintiffs and the DOJ moved for summary judgement.
On March 19, 2009, oral argument on the summary judgment motions and the Vulcans and individual plaintiffs’ motion to certify a class was held before United States District Judge Nicholas Garaufis at the United States District Courthouse in Brooklyn.
On May 11, 2009, the United States District Court certified the case as a class action with the Vulcan Society as class representatives.
Tags: African American firefighters, Black Firefighters, Center for Constitutional Rights, class action lawsuits, EEOC, Judge Sonia Sotomayo, NYFD, Uniformed Firefighters Association, United States of America and Vulcan Society Inc. v. City of New York, Vulcan Society