Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Ricci

I like George Will's take on the Supreme Court's decision in Ricci. It's actually understandable why New Haven felt a need to invalidate the results of their promotion exam since they feared a lawsuit over it, because of the 1991 Civil Rights Act. The problem here is with the 1991 law which created liability for hiring criteria that have a disparate impact. This inevitably leads to qualified people being denied a promotion or job they earned based on objective standards. Because of the 1991 Act, the statutory basis that the Court uses is a bit murky. Although some have praised the court for showing restraint in not relying on the 14th Amendment, it seems to me to be the clearer basis. The bottom line is that the firefighters were denied equal protection of the laws in this case whereas the statute could be used to defend either result depending on which provision was used. Since the 1991 amendments were adopted after the original 1964 Act, arguably they should have precedence over the earlier provisions.

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