Judge Finds Racial Bias in Fire Dept. Recruiting

The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: July 22, 2009

New York City used tests that discriminated against black and Hispanic applicants to the Fire Department and had little relation to firefighting, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Wednesday, dealing a blow to the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
“These examinations unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color from the opportunity to serve as New York City firefighters,” wrote Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, referring to two tests administered in 1999 and 2002.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in 2007 after a federal complaint by the Vulcan Society, an association of black firefighters, led to an investigation into the Fire Department’s hiring practices.
The judge said he would determine later what remedies to require of the city. They could include payment of lost wages, retroactive seniority for some minority employees and affirmative action hiring. Noting that the court had ruled against the city in past decades in lawsuits brought over its hiring practices, Judge Garaufis wrote that even as the city’s black and Hispanic population had increased, “the overwhelmingly monochromatic composition of the F.D.N.Y. has stubbornly persisted.”
Like firefighting forces in several other big cities, New York’s has remained disproportionately white, despite pressures and efforts to diversify. According to the city’s Law Department, at the end of May, roughly 3 percent of the 11,529 firefighters were black, and about 6 percent were Hispanic. Federal census estimates put each group at roughly 27 percent of the city’s population.
“If there was any doubt that the city did have problems with its hiring process, it’s now been decided that in fact they do,” said Darius Charney of the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs. “Now it’s hard for them to argue that they in fact are not discriminating.”

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/nyregion/23firefighters.html?_r=1&th&emc=th