High court to hear firefighters' reverse discrimination lawsuit

This should be very interesting.

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline)-The U.S. Supreme Court will consider this week whether a city can use race as a hiring or promotional standard for its employees.

The case comes from a 2004 lawsuit filed by 18 firefighters who allege they were denied a move up the command ranks of the New Haven, Conn., fire department because they were not members of a minority group.

The firefighters say their rights to equal protection as well as their protections under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were trampled when the city threw out their test scores on a promotional exam because no African-American candidate received a high enough score to also be considered for the same promotion.

For its part, the city has argued that allowing the test scores with such wide racial discrepancies could have violated federal law and opened the city to being sued by minority test-takers.