\nThe case stems from July 1995, when 26,000 applicants took tests for entry-level Chicago firefighter positions.<\/p>\n
\nIn January 1996, applicants were informed of their test results.<\/p>\n
\nTwelve percent of all the white applicants made it into the well-qualified group, compared to only 2 percent of all African-American applicants. Seventy-six percent of the highest group was white, as compared to only 12 percent black applicants.<\/p>\n
\nAlthough the numbers indicated whites were more likely to be offered employment, and although the trial court determined the questions and methodologies of the test to have been discriminatory, the impact of the test on hiring decisions remained unclear until May when Chicago first hired firefighters who had taken the test. Once hiring began, Chicago used the list over time.<\/p>\n
\nThe African-American Firefighters League consulted attorneys in April 1996 to determine whether they had a discrimination case. Title VII requires that such a claim be filed within 300 days from the date of the discriminatory action.<\/p>\n
\nThe lawyers said there would be no timeliness issue as they assumed the clock would reset each time the city hired a firefighter based on the test scores. When the attorneys finally filed the claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March 1997 on behalf of Arthur L. Lewis Jr. and a class of approximately 6,000 other black firefighter applicants, it was more than 400 days after the test results were first announced.<\/p>\n
\nThe federal district court looked to the merits of the discrimination claim and ruled that the test had a disparate impact on African-Americans. Chicago did not challenge the discrimination adjudication, but rather appealed on the basis that the claim was not filed on time.<\/p>\n
\nThe 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Chicago, ruling the clock started when the test takers were informed of the scores and the three qualification categories and not when hiring decisions later were made based on the tests. The court said the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ made a “fatal mistake” in assuming the discriminatory action amounted to a continuing violation that reset the clock each time a hiring decision was made.<\/p>\n
\nThe U.S. Supreme Court will decide: Did a discriminatory employment practice occur each time Chicago hired a new firefighter from its list of well-qualified applicants, thus resetting the time period for filing a claim each time? Or instead did a single discriminatory act occur when the applicants learned of the results of the test and of Chicago’s policy of hiring from the list, starting the 300-day filing period from that date?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n CHICAGO\u00a0(WBBM)\u00a0 — The Supreme Court Sunday is set to hear a long-standing case regarding discrimination in the Chicago Fire Department. A federal court found in 2005 that Chicago\u2019s 1995 test for aspiring firefighters discriminated against minorities. City officials did not disagree but, the City of Chicago did not settle the case, but instead appealed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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