[Funkenstein]

Originally Posted by zerojunkie

Yeah, I'm not buying that shit. They were all given the same list of study materials three months before the test. The black firefighters association even said it was a test to measure the ability to read and retain the information contained within the study material. That creates a level playing field right there unless some of the fire fighters didn't have access to the study material. In fact, one of the main plaintiffs went to great lengths to study for the exam despite being dyslexic.

"That's what I'm having a problem with. It was reported the city just threw the results out. Yahoo and the WSJ editorial board reported this, but they never mentioned that the city saw severe racial disparity from test results which caused them to have a 5-day civil review board in the first place. After the review came to the conclusion that the test was actually flawed (not just based on test results, but in how the test was created, how it was scored, and how the methodology of testing was never explained to the city of New Haven, which was a direct violation of contract). In addition, it was shown that other less disparate tests were given in areas around New Haven that had much less disparate results regarding the qualifications of so-called minorities as supervisors. I think the biggest mistake the city made was throwing the test out altogether, even though it was proven to be flawed. Had the city just slightly altered the test to:
1) Eliminate the questions that were geographically incorrect,
2) Eliminate the questions in which the correct answers were in direct contradiction to New Haven firefighting policy,
3) Eliminate the multiple-choice questions in which ALL the answers were in direct contradiction to New Haven firefighting policy, the results would have been quite different as previous (and more conceptually valid) tests have shown.

What scares me about the decision isn't that Ricci is necessarily less-qualified than any African-American or Latinos who took the test or visa-versa (I honestly think Ricci and the African-Americans would have scored higher had the test been more relevant to the city of New Haven). My fear is that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act will have less weight in proving racial discrimination because now an intent to discriminate will have to be shown even when the numbers already show racial disparity (and a pretty flawed test in this case). Racial disparity might not hold weight as an argument anymore, even when African-Americans are qualified for the positions as this case eventually showed."



My issues stand with the bolded (as DJMarbil, the original poster pointed out). Again, we'll see.