Court Rules In Favor of Firefighters, Reverses Sotomayor

The Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision rejecting the claim of firefighters who say they were discriminated against when the results of a test were rejected for racial reasons.

The 5-4 ruling was along ideological lines, and reversed a decision reached by Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor that was made without any analysis.

I predicted that Sotomayor would be reversed and that in her confirmation hearings she would just adopt Justice Ginsburg's dissent to explain why she ruled the way she did- even though she offered no explanation at all in her original opinion.

Beyond the rejection of Sotomayor, this case will have far reaching implications. The ruling essentially means that a disparate impact effecting one group alone does not justify employing intentional discrimination against another group for the sole purpose of avoiding the disparate impact without showing that the disparate impact itself was intentionally discriminatory or based on something unrelated to the job itself.

In this case, the City of New Haven threw out a test designed to lead to promotions when the top scorers on the test were all white.  The Supreme Court ruling said this was an unlawful action without a showing from the City that the test was intentionally designed to have a disparate impact on minorities.  The Court further concluded that the only reason the test was thrown out was because the top scorers were white and as such, they were the victims of intentional discrimination.

The ruling will make thinly veiled quotas and outcome based testing much more difficult in the future.

Opinion here.

UPDATE:  While Ed Cone tries to convince readers that liberal media bias is a fiction, I noticed that neither MSNBC nor CNN featured the reversal of Sotomayor by the Supreme Court prominently on their websites.  It was buried in the line section.  By contrast, FOX headlined it.  Regardless of Sotomayor's position, this was a pretty big case and should have been treated as such.  But for some reason, CNN and MSNBC don't think so.

Denying that liberal media bias exists when so many members of the liberal media have already conceded as much really makes one look foolish.

UPDATE 2: More from Clint Bolick.

Comments

[Bubba]

"I predicted that Sotomayor would be reversed and that in her confirmation hearings she would just adopt Justice Ginsburg's dissent to explain why she ruled the way she did- even though she offered no explanation at all in her original opinion."

It's important to note that even Ginsburg and the other three dissenters said the Sotomayor court was wrong not to remand.

Ed Whelan:

"In footnote 10 of her dissent, Justice Ginsburg, agreeing with the position that President Obama’s Department of Justice took, states: 'Ordinarily, a remand for fresh consideration [whether the City of New Haven in fact had good cause to act] would be in order.' But because the majority saw no need to remand, Ginsburg explains 'why, if final adjudication by this Court is indeed appropriate, New Haven should be the prevailing party.'

In other words, Ginsburg doesn’t believe that final disposition of the case is appropriate. She and her fellow dissenters therefore believe that Sotomayor and her Second Circuit colleagues and the district court were wrong to grant summary judgment to the City of New Haven.

[Update/clarification: Ginsburg believes that Sotomayor and the other judges below applied the wrong standard: 'The lower courts focused on respondents’ "intent" rather than on whether respondents in fact had good cause to act.' I haven’t had time to examine whether Ginsburg’s standard is in fact the same that DOJ advocated and have therefore struck through the passage above.]

[Bubba]

Whelan has more:

"I see that various supporters of Judge Sotomayor are contending that she’s vindicated by the fact that the district court’s legal reading that she adopted is roughly comparable to the position of the four dissenters in Ricci. (Set aside that even the dissenters say that she applied the wrong legal standard.)

But this claim of vindication misunderstands the primary charge against Sotomayor that arises from her handling of the case."

[Spag]

They will grasp for whatever they can. One thing that Ginsburg does do is negate my prediction that Sotomayor would simply adopt her legal reasoning during confirmation hearings. She can't without looking pretty foolish.

[Brenda Bowers]

This action was entirely too long coming. I am happy to see it finally. BB

[Roch101]

So the highest rated cable news channel headlines the story -- that makes Ed's point.

[Spag]

No, it doesn't. It proves that the one network that bills itself as "fair and balanced" actually came through, while the rest of the media essentially downplayed an important decision that they would have otherwise featured more prominently had it not been for Sotomayor's link to the case.