The Illogic of Ricci

Finacial Times' Christopher Caldwell comments on the problems with the dissenters in Ricci. The key point:


"In the Ricci case, the testing company and the city of New Haven took extraordinary steps to insulate their test against any hint of racial bias. But the city feared it could be sued under “disparate impact” provisions of civil rights law if it did not throw the test out. No doubt it was right. And the court’s dissenters, particularly the outgoing justice David Souter, are right to say that New Haven was put in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position. What they see less clearly is that this trap is a product of the illogic of the law itself. If even fair tests leave you liable to litigation on the grounds of racism, then the system is arbitrary and abusive.

The dissenters’ argument goes on a wild goose chase after some grounds on which to protect the results-oriented vision of civil rights. “They had no vested right to promotion,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote of the firefighters. “Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them.” But this argument relies on the assumption that there are some as-yet-unidentified black firefighters who do have a vested right to promotion." (my emphasis)


So Justice Ginsburg thinks they have a "vested right to promotion", and to heck with their abilities! It is sometimes depressing to analyze SCOTUS decisions.