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Opinion: Conn. department can’t be faulted for pushing diversity

The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON — It’s hard to imagine a clearer statement of what ought to be a bedrock principle of American law than that line from Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion in Parents Involved v. Seattle School District. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that race cannot be a factor in assigning children to public schools.

Today, the Court will hear oral arguments in another dispute over racial preferences, this time in the workplace. In Ricci v. DeStefano, firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut who passed a qualifying exam were denied promotions to lieutenant or captain because of the color of their skin. They were white.

The High Court will decide whether New Haven violated civil rights law and the Constitution when it threw out the results of the examinations after no black test takers passed. The city doesn’t deny that its decision to scrap the test was based on race, but it justifies it under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires employers not to rely on exams that have a racially disparate impact. If it promoted the white candidates, the city says, it would face lawsuits from the black candidates.

Full Story: With Court’s 4-4 conservative-liberal split, decision may rest with Justice Anthony Kennedy