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villages/hispanic/ AP Headlines Update Page
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Reverse discrimination ruling leaves confusion |
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Discrimination case raises questions for Sotomayor |
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SoCal immigrant activist charged
with vote fraud |
villages/hispanic/ AP Headlines Update Page
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 Hispanic
American Village News
By The Associated Press
Reverse discrimination ruling leaves confusion
By DAVE COLLINS
Associated Press Writer
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - The Supreme
Court ruling in favor of white New Haven firefighters who said they were
victims of reverse discrimination will probably leave employers
confused, civil rights advocates and labor attorneys say.
The court ruled 5-4 Monday that the
white firefighters were denied promotions unfairly because of their
race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor
endorsed as a federal appeals court judge.
The majority of justices said the
city was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans
and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or
captains based on the results. The city said it had acted to avoid a
lawsuit from minorities.
While the court upheld that employers
still have an obligation under civil rights laws to avoid discrimination
in hiring, promoting and compensating workers, the ruling creates
confusing standards on how to meet that obligation, said Wade Henderson,
president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil
Rights.
"Employers will now face a convoluted
minefield when attempting to protect workers from discrimination,''
Henderson said. "Employers are looking for bright lines ... they're
looking for clear directives to help them better understand how they can
engage in nondiscriminatory decisions.''
The ruling is confusing, Henderson
said, because the high court seemed to say that while New Haven
officials tried to avoid discrimination, throwing out the test was
discriminatory. "It puts employers in a real quandary,'' he said.
The Obama administration should
direct the government's civil rights agencies to offer guidance on the
ruling, said Shirley Wilcher, executive director of the American
Association for Affirmative Action.
"In the meantime, we're scratching
our heads,'' she said. "We're concerned about the impact on employers
who want to comply with the law and do not want to discriminate ... and
it's not clear how to do that.''
Bernard Jacques, a Hartford-based
labor and employment attorney, also believes the ruling will stump many
employers. The court ruled that test results alone are not enough to
prove discrimination, that a "strong basis in evidence'' is needed, but
justices didn't define that phrase, Jacques said.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said in the
ruling, "Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance
on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and
qualified for promotions.'' He was joined in the majority by Chief
Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this
court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have
other persons received promotions in preference to them.''
Justices David Souter, Stephen Breyer
and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read
aloud in court Monday. Speaking dismissively of the majority opinion,
she predicted the court's ruling "will not have staying power.''
The ruling is "a sign that individual
achievement should not take a back seat to race or ethnicity,'' said
Karen Torre, the firefighters' attorney. "I think the import of the
decision is that cities cannot bow to politics and pressure and lobbying
by special interest groups or act to achieve racial quotas.''
At a news conference on the steps of
city hall in New Haven, firefighter Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff in
the lawsuit, said the ruling showed that "if you work hard, you can
succeed in America.''
New Haven, trying to fill senior fire
department vacancies, gave a test to 77 candidates for lieutenant and 41
candidates for captain. Fifty-six firefighters passed the exams,
including 41 whites, nine blacks and six Hispanics. But of those, only
17 whites and two Hispanics could expect promotion.
The city eventually decided not to
use the exam to determine promotions. It said it acted because it might
have been vulnerable to claims that the exam had a "disparate impact''
on minorities in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The white firefighters said the
decision violated the same law's prohibition on intentional
discrimination. Twenty white plaintiffs sued.
The city declined to validate the
test after it was given, a step that could have identified flaws or
determined that there were no serious problems with it. In addition,
city officials could not say what was wrong with the test, other than
the racially skewed results.
"The city could be liable for
disparate-impact discrimination only if the examinations were not job
related'' or the city failed to use a less discriminatory alternative,
Kennedy said. "We conclude that there is no strong basis in evidence to
establish that the test was deficient in either of these respects.''
But Ginsburg said the court should
have assessed "the starkly disparate results'' of the exams against the
backdrop of historical and ongoing inequality in the New Haven fire
department. As of 2003, she said, only one of the city's 21 fire
captains was African-American.
___
Associated Press writers Mark Sherman
in Washington, D.C., and Katie Nelson in New Haven contributed to this
report.
Discrimination case raises questions for Sotomayor
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court's
backing of reverse discrimination claims by white firefighters is
providing a fresh line of criticism for foes of high-court nominee Sonia
Sotomayor in the run-up to her July confirmation hearings.
The 5-4 ruling on Monday, which
reversed a appellate court ruling Sotomayor endorsed last year, is
unlikely to derail her nomination -- and it may not even sway a vote.
Reaction to the decision fell almost purely along partisan lines, with
Republicans cheering the decision and saying it raises serious concerns
about the judge, and Democrats condemning the opinion and arguing that
Sotomayor had acted appropriately.
Still, the Supreme Court's decision
in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano highlighted the competing ideological
strains that will shape the debate over confirming Sotomayor who would
be the first Hispanic justice on the high court.
Conservatives who cheered the
reversal as a blow in favor of evenhanded application of
anti-discrimination laws said it deepened their questions about the
judge's ability to keep her personal opinions and background out of her
decisions.
"This case will only raise more
questions in the minds of the American people concerning Judge
Sotomayor's commitment to treat each individual fairly and not as a
member of a group,'' said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior
Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Liberals who denounced the ruling as
potentially damaging to workplace diversity efforts countered that the
decision should in fact end questions about whether Sotomayor is an
"activist judge.''
Sotomayor and her panel "did what
judges are supposed to do, they followed precedent,'' said Sen. Patrick
Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's chairman. He called the
overturned appeals court decision an example of "judicial restraint.''
Sotomayor's supporters noted that the
appeals court decision followed well-established legal precedents --
something conservatives routinely say judges should do. They also
pointed out that she did not actually write the appeals court decision
but was rather one member of a three-judge panel that rejected the white
firefighters' claim of discrimination.
At issue in the case was a decision
by the city of New Haven, Connecticut, to throw out a promotion exam for
firefighters because virtually no minorities scored well enough to
qualify. The Supreme Court ruled that the city's fear of a racial
discrimination lawsuit by minority firefighters wasn't by itself enough
to allow it to discriminate against the white candidates who did well
enough to get promotions.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
joined in her dissent by Justice David Souter -- whom Sotomayor would
replace if confirmed -- said civil rights laws were never meant to
prevent employers from trying to avoid discriminating against
minorities. They said no firefighters were entitled to a promotion, nor
were minority firefighters given preferential treatment.
Conservatives pounced on the decision
to amplify their case against Sotomayor. They have criticized her
harshly for saying she hoped a "wise Latina'' would usually reach better
conclusions than a white male without similar experiences.
"It's just one more data point that
she thinks it's OK to make decisions as a judge based on your own
personal preferences, gender, race, background, political agenda --
instead of being a servant of the law,'' said Wendy Long of the
conservative Judicial Confirmation Network.
Critics also faulted Sotomayor for
dispensing of the case in a short, pro forma opinion that did not
discuss the merits or the precedents of the case -- a move they argued
was calculated to bury the decision and dodge the controversial issues
it raised.
Sotomayor's allies said the panel
ruling, known as a "per curiam'' opinion, was typical of cases where
there were clear precedents to guide the court.
Democrats seemed unconcerned about
the potential fallout from the case.
The White House said there was
"little political significance'' to what the court decided.
SoCal immigrant activist charged with vote fraud
By The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) - An outspoken
immigrant rights activist has been charged with election fraud for
allegedly registering to vote in Los Angeles County when he did not live
there.
Nativo Lopez has been charged with
voter registration fraud, filing false documents, perjury and fraudulent
voting, Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district
attorney's office, said Thursday.
The California secretary of state's
office said Lopez leased commercial space in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights
neighborhood and registered to vote there in 2006 even though he lived
with his family in Orange County.
Lopez is national director of
Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana. He declined to comment on the
charges Thursday.
Lopez will be arraigned July 8. He
appeared in court Wednesday and was released on his own recognizance,
Robison said.
Lopez was formerly a schools trustee
in Santa Ana but was recalled in 2003 amid a heated debate over
bilingual education.
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