undefined | Better HN

0 pointsrdl15y ago0 comments

The weird thing is that there was a case in New Hampshire a few years ago where firefighters had a test, and the city threw out the results of the test in making hiring decisions because...they thought the test would be unfairly biased against minorities. The Supreme Court heard this case and ruled that the test should have been applied, which at least to me seems to be the opposite of the Griggs case.

0 comments

4 comments · 2 top-level

yummyfajitas15y ago· 2 in thread

That wasn't an IQ test. It was a direct test of firefighting knowledge. While the test was never released to the public, a couple of questions were.

They were mostly stuff like: "You are entering a burning factory which appears to be made primarily out of concrete. What sort of saw blade do you attach to your buzzsaws? a) Steel b) diamond coated steel c)..."

The court ruled that the test results should have been applied simply because the de-facto procedure of:

1) Promote people based on a test, BUT

2) If black people don't do well, ignore the test.

was racist in favor of blacks.

(Another question famously related to NYC geography, since the test was lazily copied from NYC.)

sethg15y ago

If I recall correctly, the fire department in question was afraid that if it promoted strictly based on the test, then at least one black firefighter who hadn’t been promoted would sue, and the department didn’t want to defend the test in court. So they tried to dodge the problem by bailing on the test, and then got sued from the other direction.

yummyfajitas15y ago

That fear was quite legitimate.

After Ricci was decided, a black firefighter sued the city over the test [1]. His theory was that weighting promotions via 60% objective written test/40% subjective oral test was racist since it had a disparate impact on blacks. He lost.

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/04/22/news/aa3_nebri...

[1] I believe he lacked standing before the supreme court decision, since he suffered no harm.

1 more reply

ErrantX15y ago

If you could show that passing the test was an important part of performing in the job (i.e. those that did not pass the test would be worse, or unable to perform the job) then it would pass the Griggs finding.

The main issue with Griggs was that the court found that people who failed the test were no worse (at their job) than those that passed it. And, so, decided (rightly) that the test was not there for performance/ability reasons, but for other reasons.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse