Supreme Court case analysis

Civil rights case: What are the constitutional arguments? How do the arguments differ/Resemble the cases in the 1950s and 1960s?

One recent civil rights case that proved to be controversial long after the U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed its final decision was Ricci v. DeStefano (2009). In this case, the city of New Haven, fearing a discrimination lawsuit, expunged the results of a promotions test. All twenty-seven African-American firefighters in the department failed to pass the exam, while a number of white firefighters did pass the exam. The firefighters alleged that this action discriminated against them based upon their race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This case exhibited the shift in understanding civil rights legislation that had occurred since Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and Cooper v. Aaron (1958). In Brown, the fact that African-Americans were disadvantaged by 'separate but equal' laws was acknowledged: in Ricci, the legislation created by Congress to protect African-Americans was used to protect victims of reverse discrimination. While remedial actions to repair past injustices are sometimes acceptable, the Court found that these injustices were not sufficiently compelling in the case of the New Haven fire department to warrant throwing out the promotional test results, nor did the city seem likely to be liable for prosecution for creating a test that had a disparate impact upon the workforce.

Employers are not permitted to create requirements for jobs that have a disparate impact upon the ethnic composition of the workforce, if such requirements are not necessary for the job. But "once a plaintiff has established a prima facie case of disparate impact, the employer may defend by demonstrating that its policy or practice is job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity." Furthermore, "the City's assertions that the exams at issue were not job related and consistent with business necessity are blatantly contradicted by the record, which demonstrates the detailed steps taken to develop and administer the tests and the painstaking analyses of the questions asked to assure their relevance to the captain and lieutenant positions." Only after fearing it might be the subject of a lawsuit, not out of due consideration of the relevance of the exam to select the best officers did the city expunge the results.