The U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5-4 in a case that has been a lightning rod for high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, invalidated a Connecticut city's decision to scrap the results of a firefighter promotion exam in which the white candidates scored better than their black peers.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the court's opinion, said the city of New Haven violated a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits employment discrimination.
"Whatever the city's ultimate aim - however well intentioned or benevolent it might have seemed - the city made its employment decision because of race," Kennedy wrote.
"The city rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white."
Kennedy said an employer cannot throw out an exam unless there is strong evidence that the test harmed minorities. New Haven didn't meet this standard, he said.
The court's four other conservative justices joined Kennedy's opinion.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in dissent for the court's four liberal members, said while she had sympathy for the white firefighters, the court's decision ignored evidence that the city of New Haven's promotion exam was flawed and that New Haven correctly responded to the biased results.
"Firefighting is a profession in which the legacy of racial discrimination casts an especially long shadow," Ginsburg wrote. "I would hold that New Haven had ample cause to believe its selection process was flawed and not justified by business necessity."
The case rested on the question of whether New Haven acted validly in choosing not to use the test results because the scores meant that no black candidates were eligible for promotion.
A group of white firefighters sued New Haven's mayor and other officials, arguing that the city engaged in unconstitutional race discrimination by blocking their promotions. City officials responded that the test may have discriminated against black test-takers, which could have placed New Haven in violation of federal civil rights laws if it had made promotions based on the test results.
Sotomayor was one of three judges sitting on an appeals court panel that issued a brief one-paragraph ruling upholding the city's decision not to certify the test results.
Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, criticized the court's decision and defended Sotomayor's ruling as a judge on the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"It is notable that four justices would have upheld the Second Circuit's ruling," said Leahy, who will lead Sotomayor's confirmation hearings next month. "It is less likely now that employers will conscientiously try to fulfill their obligations under this time-honored civil rights law."
Leading the charge against Sotomayor, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the committee's top Republican, said the judge should expect to be challenged on her decision in the nomination hearings.
"This case will only raise more questions in the minds of the American people concerning Judge Sotomayor's commitment to treat each individual fairly and not as a member of a group," Sessions said in a statement.
Republican lawmakers criticized Sotomayor for the brevity of the Second Circuit's decision.
"The Second Circuit should have recognized the serious and unique issues this case raised and given it the thorough treatment it deserved," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, also a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Conservative legal experts highlighted a footnote in Ginsburg's dissent in which the justice said she would have preferred sending the case back to the lower court for further consideration. Ginsburg said the appeals court incorrectly focused on the city's "intent" to not discriminate rather than focusing on New Haven's justifications for blocking the promotions. However, she said the city still should have prevailed.
Critics of Sotomayor pounced on the footnote as evidence that every justice questioned the Second Circuit's reasoning.
"This really was a unanimous opinion that the lower courts were in error. They just disagreed on what the error was," said Gail Heriot, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, speaking on a conference call hosted by the conservative Federalist Society.
Democrats said the lower court's decision illustrated Sotomayor's commitment to judicial restraint in following legal precedents.
"The Second Circuit's opinion was clearly in the mainstream at the time this was decided," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "Judge Sotomayor followed the rules that were in place at the time."
The case dates back to 2003, when New Haven decided to fill 15 slots for lieutenants and captains in its fire department. The city contracted the test's creation to a consultant company, who administered the test that fall. The exam consisted of a written, multiple-choice section, which counted for 60% of the total score, and an oral assessment, weighted 40%.
Firefighters of all races had passed the test, but not proportionally. Of the 19 firefighters who qualified for a promotion, none were black, though two were Hispanic.
Troubled by the fact that the black firefighters had passed the test at roughly one-half the rate as the white firefighters, the city's civil service board held five public hearings and ultimately deadlocked on whether to certify the test scores, which resulted in no promotions across the board.
A trial judge ruled in favor of the city and the 2nd Circuit affirmed that decision.
Sotomayor and two other 2nd Circuit judges said New Haven, in refusing to validate the exams, "was simply trying to fulfill its obligations" under federal civil rights laws after it was confronted with test results that had a disproportionate impact on minorities.
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