Well, the author must certainly have a better idea about the case than a white guy.
Posted on 06/17/2009 2:55:42 PM PDT by presidio9
Many conservatives have taken up the cause of Frank Ricci, a New Haven, Conn., firefighter who sued the city, claiming that officials discriminated against him when they rejected the results of a promotion exam, on which he did well, because all but one of the top scoring candidates were white. Ricci's claim is now before the Supreme Court. I've written about it once to explain why Ricci's argument is a threat to an important part of modern civil rights law, and I'm writing again now because a lot of people have suggested that Ricci has been treated unusually and unfairly in the courts. In fact, he's been treated just like any other plaintiff suing for employment discrimination. The anger and frustration of the top-scoring firefighters who expected promotions is understandable. But the outrage on the right is also ironic, because the reason that people who sue for employment discrimination—like Frank Ricci—rarely win their cases is that conservative judges have spent decades making sure they usually lose.
A reverse-discrimination lawsuit like Ricci's is, legally speaking, no different from a conventional discrimination lawsuit. The plaintiff bears the burden of proof on every factual issue. This was firmly established by Justice Antonin Scalia's 1993 majority opinion in a case called St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks,
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
The truth is New Haven didn't want to promote Mr. Ricci ~
Well, I guess if you can’t blame Bush, Scalia is the next “logical” choice. Right?????
Well, the author must certainly have a better idea about the case than a white guy.
So I guess by Richard Thompson Ford’s logic (if that was my name, I’d already be tired of it) every decision that Justice Scalia has ever written is correct, right? Or is it only this one that’s right because it happens to be convenient for making his point? Liberals can have it both ways of course.
Slate is still in business? They must have gotten a place at the Soros teat?
>>FROM THE ARTICLE: But, as Justice Scalia made clear in Hicks, the employer doesn’t have to prove that there was a good reason for its decision; it needs only to claim that there was one. New Haven claimed that it rejected the results of the promotion exam because to eliminate all black and all but one Hispanic firefighter from a chance at promotion, based on their scores, would have violated civil rights law, subjecting the city to a lawsuit by disappointed minority firefighters... At this point, to keep his case alive, the plaintiff has to prove that the employer’s reason is just a pretext <<
Nonsense. What he has to prove is discrimination. THat’s the bar that Scalia set. The author is trying to fix Scalia’s name to the district court’s opinion that discrimination isn’t discrimination if the employer has a reasonable expectation of being justified for discrimination.
The author’s logic full of crap. No need to use an ad-hominem attack on him.
Nonsense. What he has to prove is discrimination. If there only has to be "a" reason, regardless of it being a good or legitimate one, wouldn't "I refused to hire him because he was black" qualify?
It seems to me that if New Haven makes that argument, all one should have to do is ask the following question: "If more of the people who got good scores had been black or Hispanic, would the test results have been accepted?" If the answer is yes, then the test results were thrown out because of the race of the people who scored well. QED.
That brings to mind a question that really bugs me. Where are the unions on all of this??????
Aren't they supposed to be standing up for their members???? I think maybe they should have went on strike when the city initially made the decision, and the case would have never made it to court.
Or are they afraid that they would put Mr Obama in the awkward position of having to choose between two of his primary supporters - the affirmative action crowd and the unions????
Just askin'.
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