Supreme Court rules for black Chicago firefighters

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sc-dc-chicago-firefighters-20100524,0,3414845.story

Supreme Court rules for black Chicago firefighters
May 24, 2010

Washington - The Supreme Court dealt a potentially costly defeat to the city of Chicago Monday, reinstating a discrimination ruling in favor of 6,000 black applicants for firefighting jobs in the 1990s. In a 9-0 decision, the justices said Chicago had used an entry-level test for the Chicago Fire Department that had a "disparate impact" based on race. And therefore, they said, the city was liable for paying damages to those applicants who had "qualified" scores on the test, but were excluded in favor of those who scored higher.

Earlier this year, a lawyer for black applicants estimated the total damages in the case could reach $100 million. Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking at the court Monday, said he and his colleagues were applying the civil rights laws as written by Congress, not necessarily as he and others think it should be written. Since 1991, federal law has made it illegal for employers to use an "employment practice" that had a "disparate impact on the basis of race."...

The unanimous ruling stands in sharp contrast to the deep split within the Supreme Court last year over a case involving white firefighters from New Haven, Connecticut. They sued after they were denied promotions when the city scrapped a test because its impact on black applicants. They won a 5-4 ruling from the Supreme Court saying they were victims of illegal discrimination.

Chicago's case involved the opposite situation. Where New Haven had backed away from using its test results, Chicago pressed ahead and was later sued for using a test that had a discriminatory impact on blacks...

that the current USSC ruled in favor of a discrimination claim, and second that it was 9-0. Speechless I tell you! Happy, but I'm wondering if hell hath frozen over or something? Are cows flying? Pigs falling from the sky? Or am I dreaming? It must be something like that, because there's just no other explanation.

Yahoo! for some sanity across the board at the USSC.

And am waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Flabergasterd, shocked, have seen an alternate universe?

Is my calendar out of whack?

Antonin Scalia???
John Roberts???
Sam Aliton???

Is this real or a flashback?

I didn't know that was Chicago, or involved so many people.

And is where they used a test without "desperate impact" and then threw out the results since the minority results were too low. Along the litigation trail Justice Sotomayer dismissed the New Haven case that SCOTUS later upheld.

For years, they've short-changed plaintiffs because of ambiguous language in statutes, carving out exceptions and loopholes where Congress had no intention of letting offending employers off the hook. Sounds like Congress has been tightening up the language so that Scalia and his henchmen can't slip out the side door anymore. Which has them feeling oh so blue. Poor babies.