It is the duty of New Haven, Connecticut (City) officials to carry out objective promotional examinations to determine the firefighters who qualify to fill in the positions of lieutenants and captains. In one of the examinations, it was realized that the white firefighters outsmarted their black counterparts. This sparked up a debate throughout the US and as a result, the results were nullified by the city officials. Following the nullification, the white firefighters moved to court and sued the city and respondent officials because they felt that they should have been given the job. The city officials claimed that if they gave the jobs to the whites from the examination results, then they would have violated Title VII which prohibits acts of employment base on race, color, sex and nation of originality (Kamp, 2010). The district court ruled in favor of the whites because the city and respondent officials lacked solid evidence to back their nullification act.
The ruling by the district court in favor of the whites had a negative impact on the blacks. The black firefighters felt that they were being looked down upon by their white counterparts. The ruling also degraded the operations of the firefighting department because it led to a division between the white and black firefighters (Schwartz, 2009). The feeling of superiority by the white firefighters towards the black fighters has also been witnessed. This has interfered with the whole firefighting department. I don’t support the ruling that the district court gave regarding this issue. The white firefighters should have accepted the city’s action of nullifying the promotional examination and probably go for another round of promotional exam. Through this, the city officials would ensure that there is racial parity with regard to promoting the qualified firefighters to the posts of lieutenants and captains within the firefighting department.
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References
Kamp, A. (2010). Ricci v. Destefano and Disparate Treatment: How the Case Makes Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause Unworkable. (Online). Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1657216
Schwartz, D. (2009). Five Things Employers Can Learn from the Ricci v. DeStefano Case. (Online). Retrieved from https://www.ctemploymentlawblog.com/2009/06/articles/five-things-employers-can-learn-from-the-ricci-v-destefano-case/
