A fireman’s perspective on SCOTUS reversal of Ricci

The Supreme Court overturned Ricci v. DeStefano, the lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, Connecticut by firefighters claiming the city had discriminated against them due to their race. SCOTUS once again decided along ideological lines 5-4 with Kennedy as the swing vote.

Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor surely took a big hit today as SCOTUS reversed Sotomayor and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’s decision that New Haven was acting within its obligations of the Civil Rights Act. How can Sotomayor be the best choice for a lifetime appointment to safeguard the Constitution when she has been overturned by the court she seeks to join? And if this ‘wise latina woman’ is wrong on this issue, what else will she be wrong on?

But with today reversal, it will be interesting is to watch the White House and their press corps spin the story. The press will surely use the race card, but the 100-year-plus struggle for civil rights in the U.S. is over and Americans won. Discrimination of any color violates our very founding. And when the city of New Haven decided that since more whites passed the officer exams than blacks or hispanics, that the test must be too hard for minorities and had to be thrown out.

As a firefighter myself, I say that New Haven’s decision is dangerously wrong. This decision isn’t isolated to city hall or the fire station: Decisions like these (picking firemen based on skin color, not ability) could cost people their lives. In America, and even Connecticut, it should be the best person for the job, not the best minority.

When it’s your house that’s on fire, you want the best firefighters going into the house and rescuing your children, not the best black or hispanic ones, right? You also aren’t likely to be too concerned whether or not the fire truck has a correct demographic representation of the local community, either.

According to our founding principles, Americans – not whites, blacks, and hispanics – are jumping off the firetruck to save your baby. The fact that New Haven made their decision not to promote white officers should be just as disgusting to each of us as the treatment of blacks in the 1960s.

In addition, and it seems this logic is lost on most: New Haven’s decision should have been an insult to the blacks and hispanics as apparently the city feels that the blacks and hispanics aren’t smart enough to . In my opinion, that’s where Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should have been. New Haven told blacks that they weren’t as smart as the white people who took the test.