Ricci ruling
the ricci vs destefano ruling came out today 5-4 in favor of ricci. for those that haven’t heard, this case was about a firefighter promotion test. this test had been used in past years to promote the city’s firefighters, and there had been no problem b/c at least 1 of the members who passed the test has been black. as long as they had at least 1 black person pass, they could say the test didn’t have disparate impact, which is difficult to prove in court. but in 2003, only 2 minorities (hispanics) passed, even tho the racial averages were about the same as previous years.
now, a bit of history (and flare, feel free to contradict me if i screwed up somewhere). the passage of the 1964 civil rights act meant that employers couldn’t treat ppl of different groups differently. but a court case, griggs vs duke power co, said that an employment test that is nominally neutral but that impacts different groups differently is unlawful if that test isn’t directly related to the job. duke power was screening their job applicants w/ an iq test, and b/c of the b/w iq gap, the impact was to screen out many black applicants. this court basically outlawed the use of iq tests even tho studies show iq is related to job performance. the case was later written into law in the civil rights act of 1991.
so the town, trying to head off a lawsuit by black firefighters, invalidated the test results and promoted no one. this was despite the fact that the town had outsourced the making of the test to a company that was supposed to make a fair test, and no one in the fire dept had seen it before the day of the test. incensed white firefighters sued, and now they’ve won. the ruling for ricci means that the town acted unlawfully in invalidating the test results. this doesn’t, however, mean that iq tests are coming back. it only means that fear of litigation isn’t sufficient to invalidate results that would in other years be valid. that’s a real catch-22 for the town b/c they can now expect to be sued again but by blacks instead of whites.
the ppl that make these tests are also in a bind. they want to make the test relevant to the job, but studies have shown that most of these tests don’t correlate w/ job performance as well as an iq test. but a test that has even some g loading will end up w/ group clusters.
here’s an example from sailer world.
Many assume that firemen just have to be brave, but here’s a very simple question from an entry-level practice test:
When coupling hoses together, ___ 50-feet hoses and ___ 75-feet hoses will result in a length of 575 feet.
a. 5, 4
b. 4, 4
c. 5, 5
d. 4, 5
(You don’t want to overestimate because firehoses filled with water are heavy.)
Now imagine having to solve that while burn victims are screaming for help.
b/c the question contains math and mathematical ability is correlated to iq, the test will have racial gaps in scores. the test maker, and by extension anyone that conducts testing, is going to be situated right between a big ol’ rock and a nasty hard place.
what’s really strange to me is that other tests w/ high g-load are used so widely. think of the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, etc. how much sense does it make to allow these tests to determine which college u attend, but not what jobs u qualify for (at least for entry level positions)?
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since the court ruled in favor of the white firefighters, doesn’t that mean that the test is fair and doesn’t have disparate impact? therefore the black firefighters don’t have a case.
they didn’t rule on whether the test is fair. they only ruled that the town couldn’t throw the results out based only on a fear of litigation. the conservatives on the court make very narrow rulings, so they basically threw the case back into lower courts w/o ruling on the more interesting parts of the suit.
just off the top of my head, I think you are absolutely right about the “business necessity” (a test being related to the job) is a counter to the disparate impact argument.
Its interesting to note that if it doesnt have anything to do with jobs, then it gets much tougher to prove discrimination because you need to prove both discriminatory intent and disparate impact.
But on a lighter note, I may come back to Huntsville soon.