Osupa 27 May 2010 Breaking News, Education, Featured Article, Good Dollars and Sense, Lifestyle, MXO News One Comment

Chicagotribune.com

By Cynthia Dysikes

Posted May 27th 2010

Applicants did not wait too long to sue the city over a 1995 hiring test that they deemed discriminatory, court finds

After more than a decade of legal wrangling, thousands of black applicants for Chicago firefighting jobs celebrated a Supreme Court ruling Monday that found they did not wait too long to sue the city over a 1995 hiring test they deemed discriminatory.

At the same time, city officials sought to temper the jubilation, insisting that the fight was not over and complaining that the ruling may put public employers in a legal bind.

“The employer is placed in a Catch-22,” said city Corporation Counsel Mara Georges at a news conference Monday. “Use the exam results, which have an adverse impact, and risk lawsuits from the group adversely impacted. Or disregard the exam results and risk lawsuits from those who stand to benefit from the results.”

The decision deals a potentially costly defeat to the city of Chicago. Earlier this year, a lawyer for black applicants estimated the total damages in the case could reach $100 million. City officials estimated Monday that damages could be $45 million.

In the 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court decided that the 6,000 black applicants had properly sued the city over an entry-level test that they claimed discriminated based on race.

In 1995, about 26,000 applicants took a written test to become firefighters. Faced with the large number of applicants for only several hundred jobs, the city decided it would consider only those who scored 89 or above.

This cutoff score excluded a high percentage of the minority applicants. In 2005, U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall ruled that the test had an illegal “disparate impact” because the city had not justified use of the cutoff score.

The city did not appeal the “disparate impact” finding but said the firefighters had waited too long to file their lawsuit. The high court disagreed.

“This is an outcome that we anticipated despite the long road it has taken us to get here, and indeed the city was warned before they administered the test” that it would not withstand a legal challenge, said Matthew Piers, the lead trial attorney for the plaintiffs.

The unanimous decision stands in sharp contrast to the 5-4 split in the Supreme Court last year over a case involving white firefighters in New Haven, Conn. The court found that New Haven unfairly treated whites by throwing out the results of a promotion test because minorities scored lower.

In the case of Lewis v. Chicago, the legal fight will continue.