redlegphi

No, all that matters is that the test returned a result with a racial disparity and that that disparity could be caused by an aspect of the test which doesn't directly test skills needed for the job. "Could be" or "was"? You're saying that if there was any chance at all that the test was biased, then we must assume it was? Even though the overwhelming evidence is that the test was unbiased? Did the minority ever point out any "aspect of the test which doesn't directly test skills needed for the job?" Or can you point out such an aspect? "Could be". It's the duty of the city to validate that the test is, indeed, completely job-based. They didn't do that prior to administering it. Therefore, the test wasn't valid. Therefore, they'd have been sued by the African-American firefighters. And yes, Ginsburg's dissent noted several ways that the test didn't directly test skills needed for the job and also noted better, less-discriminatory tests that are in use (in Bridgeport, for example).

I'm missing where Ginsburg says that the summary findings should have gone to the jury in her dissent. Could you point it out for me?

No, all that matters is that the test returned a result with a racial disparity and that that disparity could be caused by an aspect of the test which doesn't directly test skills needed for the job. That finding is based on the precedent from Griggs v. Duke Power, a Supreme Court case from 1971. I don't know a whole lot about law, but it was my understanding the precedent is kinda important.

8 judges thought one way, and 5 judges thought the other. Do you honestly believe there is only one universally correct answer to the question? Did you know that the Sotomayor court issued a summary judgement. And in her ruling she stated a jury would most likely find for the complaintants? Did you? It is addressed in both opinions of the SC ruling. Not favorably either. Did you know that there were two other judges with Sotomayor who agreed with her summary ruling and the per curiae which followed it? Did you know that 7 out of 13 judges voted to not send this case to a jury trial? Do you know what this has to do with the legal arguments of this trial, because I sure don't?

I'm not saying the test was biased. In fact, it's irrelevant if the test was biased or not. What's relevant is what the city's lawyer stated, which I bolded and which Ginsburg apparently agreed with. Specifically, again: Statistical imbalances alone, Ude correctly recognized, do not give rise to liability. Instead, presented with a disparity, an employer “has the opportunity and the burden of proving that the test is job-related and consistent with business necessity.” It was on the city of New Haven to prove that the test was job-related. They had a vote to determine if they could do that. The vote split 2-2 after hearing from a slew of experts, so the test that was held wasn't certified, because they weren't sure they could prove that the test was job-related.

Below is a quote directly from Ginsburg's dissent. The bolded bit is especially important. Between January and March 2004, the CSB held five public meetings to consider the proper course. At the first meeting, New Haven’s Corporation Counsel, Thomas Ude, described the legal standard governing Title VII disparate-impact claims. Statistical imbalances alone, Ude correctly recognized, do not give rise to liability. Instead, presented with a disparity, an employer “has the opportunity and the burden of proving that the test is job-related and consistent with business necessity.” CA2 App. A724. A Title VII plaintiff may attempt to rebut an employer’s showing of job-relatedness and necessity by identifying alternative selection methods that would have been at least as valid but with “less of an adverse or disparate or discriminatory effect.” Ibid. See also id., at A738. Accordingly, the CSB Commissioners understood, their principal task was to decide whether they were confident about the reliability of the exams: Had the exams fairly measured the qualities of a successful fire officer despite their disparate results? Might an alternative examination process have identified the most qualified candidates without creating such significant racial imbalances? Seeking a range of input on these questions, the CSB heard from test takers, the test designer, subject-matter experts, City officials, union leaders, and community members. Several candidates for promotion, who did not yet know their exam results, spoke at the CSB’s first two meetings. Some candidates favored certification. The exams, they emphasized, had closely tracked the assigned study materials. Having invested substantial time and money to prepare themselves for the test, they felt it would be unfair to scrap the results. See, e.g., id., at A772–A773, A785–A789. Other firefighters had a different view. A number of the exam questions, they pointed out, were not germane to New Haven’s practices and procedures. See, e.g., id., at A774–A784. At least two candidates opposed to certification noted unequal access to study materials. Some individuals, they asserted, had the necessary books even before the syllabus was issued. Others had to invest substantial sums to purchase the materials and “wait a month and a half for some of the books because they were on back-order.” Id., at A858. These disparities, it was suggested, fell at least in part along racial lines. While many Caucasian applicants could obtain materials and assistance from relatives in the fire service, the overwhelming majority of minority applicants were “first-generation firefighters” without such support networks. See id., at A857–A861, A886–A887. A representative of the Northeast Region of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters, Donald Day, also spoke at the second meeting. Statistical disparities, he told the CSB, had been present in the Department’s previous promotional exams. On earlier tests, however, a few minority candidates had fared well enough to earn promotions. Id., at A828. See also App. 218–219. Day contrasted New Haven’s experience with that of nearby Bridgeport, where minority firefighters held one-third of lieutenant and captain positions. Bridgeport, Day observed, had once used a testing process similar to New Haven’s, with a written exam accounting for 70 percent of an applicant’s score, an oral exam for 25 percent, and seniority for the remaining five percent. CA2 App. A830. Bridgeport recognized, however, that the oral component, more so than the written component, addressed the sort of “real-life scenarios” fire officers encounter on the job. Id., at A832. Accordingly, that city “changed the relative weights” to give primacy to the oral exam. Ibid. Since that time, Day reported, Bridgeport had seen minorities “fairly represented” in its exam results. Ibid.

New Haven is approximately 37% African-American, though that really doesn't matter in this case other than that it made the city a bit more sensitive to racial disparities when hiring or promoting.

It doesn't matter if the test has racially biased questions like billvon put out earlier. All that matters is that: 1) A racial disparity existed after the test 2) That racial disparity was caused by an aspect of the test that didn't specifically test the ability of the applicant to do the job applied for. I don't think anybody debates that #1 happened. Where the debate happened is #2.

I don't think we're crying "racism", or if we are, we shouldn't be. The intent of the test creators here is irrelevant. What's relevant is that there was a racial disparity from the test. If that racial disparity was derived purely from testing the skills required for the job, then there's no problem (which is what the majority of the Supreme Court appear to believe). However, if the racial disparity was derived from a test of a skill or trait that doesn't directly apply to the job, then there's an issue. To make an ridiculous, extreme example, if they said "We're only hiring people currently wearing white shoes" and there was a racial disparity (in either direction), then that's a problem. Or such is my layman's interpretation of the law.

From your link, this is pretty much exactly what I was trying to say: ""The city did the right thing," New Haven Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden told The Los Angeles Times. "Someone was going to be disappointed, and we could be sued either way." He's certainly right about that last part. Under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, business practices that have an "adverse impact" on members of one particular race are illegal except when those practices are demonstrably "job related" and "consistent with business necessity."" Also, the Reason Foundation is apparently arguing that intent should matter in the decision. Basically, if the test shows disparity but the creators of the test didn't mean it to, then it's all cool. That can certainly be there opinion, but the precedent of the law says it doesn't matter what the intent is, it matters what the results are and if those results are directly related to the ability to do the job or not.

She's pointing out that if a test shows a racial disparity (which this one did) then the racial disparity must be due to elements of the test which are directly related to the applicants ability to do the job.

Which, evidently, the lower court either failed to do or did not interpret the results correctly. If I'm reading the opinion of the lower court right (and since I"m not a lawyer, it's entirely probable that I'm not) the city of New Haven should have conducted a validation test to ensure that their new test was adequately job-related so that they could avoid a law suit based on a claim of disparate impact. They failed to do that and just hoped that the test results wouldn't show any racial disparity. Unfortunately for them, it did. So at that point, they're faced with either getting sued by the African-American firefighters based on a disparate impact argument or getting sued by the white firefighters for tossing out the test. They apparently chose the latter and lost. They may have chosen the former and lost as well, though I'd be interested to hear from some actual lawyers on how they'd have seen that case. It seems that New Haven pretty much couldn't win once they fucked themselves initially by not validating the test.

Because more people will read a story about how the evil affirmative action is depriving white folks of their jobs. It's more sensationalistic because it happens less often than "normal" discrimination.

What's the over and under as to when we see American diplomats being helicoptered from the roof of the U.S. Embassy real soon? Granted, I haven't been there in several years. But from what I'm hearing, the Iraqi Army and Police have transformed into professional organizations capable of carrying out their duties. I guess we'll see shortly just how good they are and if the insurgency will lose fuel as we pull further out of the country.

Not to mention that fucking up the Taliban and drawing their attention back to Afghanistan should give Pakistan a little room to breathe. Which would be good, cause they have nukes.

The big problem in this case is that it's not clear if/how the test was biased towards skin color. New Haven asked a company to create a test. They used it for the first time and saw that white candidates were passing at a rate twice that of black ones. They assumed that this was going to get them sued based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so they dumped the test. This resulted in them getting sued by the white candidates for violation of the same Title. Was the test biased due to race in some way? Undetermined. It could be biased or it could have just been a statistical anomaly. New Haven probably should have looked a bit closer at why there was such a variance in scores before they scrapped the whole test. All that being said, it's not a cut and dry case, so I don't think it's easy to say Sotomayor was wrong to rule the way she did when the case was before her.

Iraqis aren't the only ones.

1) It was a 5-4 decision, so it's not like she was completely out of her mind to have interpreted the law that way. 2) It was a case before the Supreme Court. Most of the cases before the Supreme Court are there because they aren't cut and dry cases. It's therefore pretty safe to assume that there were sound legal arguments on both sides of this case, regardless of what common sense might tell us.

Nor are the anti-war folks. I don't think that when they said they wanted to withdraw troops from Iraq (right on schedule with the Bush timetable) that they meant they'd like them redeployed to Afghanistan. I think that was predictable. One of the talking points of the Democratic Party has been that the Iraq war has distracted us from the Afghan war. Afghanistan is seen as a more just war by many on the left and I think it's clear to many that we didn't have enough troops there to really gain traction against the Taliban after initially knocking them out of power.

Well the survey is kinda black and white and we liberals tend to live our lives out there in the gray. I think a lot of liberals expected greatness out of this President and so far we've just seen mediocrity. He's better than the last President, but we expected a bit more than that standard. So, happy I voted for him? Yes. Adore him? Not so much. Vote for him again? Depends on what he does between now and 2012 and who else is in the field.

Civil libertarians and anti-torture folks aren't especially happy either. Though I agree that the GLBT folks are extremely pissed off right now, and with very good reason.

I voted for him. I thought he'd be better than this. I still prefer him to McCain, so I'm still happy I voted for him.

RAmen

Yay for mercenaries!!! [/sarcasm]

Agreed that this is a great policy change, though from what I saw when I was there, the U.S. and Afghans weren't doing a whole lot of drug interdiction anyway. The troops on the ground figured out pretty quick that you can fight a war against the Taliban and you can fight a war against drugs, but you can't fight both at the same time unless you what that whole mess to go on for a while longer.