The Red and the Blue

I’m deviating from regular politics here, and diving into an area of guilty intrigue: the United States Supreme Court.

This week, the Court is taking up the issue of affirmative action presented by Ricci v. DeStefano out of New Haven, Connecticut.  Here’s a good breakdown of the details.

Basically, New Haven sought to promote firefighters based on their scores on a two-component exam: written section plus interview.  As it ended up, the white firefighters all scored above the threshold and the minority firefighters all scored below it.  No minorities could therefore be considered for promotion.

The city threw out the whole process, arguing that the score separation between firefighters was evidence enough that the test was inherently flawed.  The white firefighters, some of whom invested in test-taking materials, sued the city claiming a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.  This is a modern case of alleged “reverse racism,” with the justices perhaps ready to overturn aspects of affirmative action.

Andrew Cohen from CBS News summarizes:  “The question in this case is whether a municipality can rig this sort of testing to avoid claims of racial bias against minorities by creating a form of racial bias against whites.”

The conservative side of the court (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas) won’t necessarily get the support of Anthony Kennedy, who has opted to limit affirmative action in the past.  Why?  Kennedy usually holds a pretty broad definition of “equal protection” and has actually led the effort to protect homosexual privacy rights.

So what if Kennedy sides with the liberal wing (Souter, Breyer, Ginsberg, Stevens), and they rule with the city that the test was inherently flawed and should not have been a priority in the promotion?  The city has favored remedying this by prioritizing other aspects of the promotion process (i.e. interview).

Possible implication: If the Court sides with the city, and takes a broad ruling to extend to a wider range of issues, it could have a big impact on university admissions policies and how they deal with SAT/ACT scores, particularly with admissions policies implementing “point” systems (like Michigan).

The New York Times has been covering a related conference discussing this same issue.

Colin Kavanaugh Uncategorized