State OK's priority list for black, Hispanic firefighters
After a judge ruled that the state's 2002 and 2004 firefighter exams discriminated against blacks and Hispanics, state officials have agreed to a plan that would give top priority to some of those minority candidates in future hiring.
Lawyers told a federal judge yesterday that under the proposal, high-scoring minority candidates who would have been hired if the tests were not discriminatory would be placed at the top of a new civil service list to be issued Dec. 1. All other candidates on the new list would be ranked according to their scores on an exam given last June.
The plan has yet to be finalized and US District Judge Patti B. Saris asked lawyers to submit additional briefs before she accepts the plan designed to remedy past discrimination.
The state and lawyers who successfully brought the class-action suit disagree over how many minority candidates should go to the top of the list. While the state contends that only 22 would have been hired if the tests weren't discriminatory, lawyers for the plaintiffs say that number is closer to 50.
In August, Saris ruled in favor of four black firefighter applicants who sued the state and the City of Lynn, finding that the 2002 and 2004 exams had a disparate impact on minority candidates, because they continued to rank applicants solely based on how they scored on written exams that test cognitive ability.
Such tests were found discriminatory in the early 1970s and led to decades of court-ordered affirmative action policies in Lynn, Boston, and other cities in the state.
Saris found that many questions on the exam had nothing to do with firefighting and that the state didn't administer a strength test or take into account other factors, including life experience, personality, and other data.
The revamped civil service test administered in June no longer is based strictly on cognitive ability. It considers additional factors, but does not include a weight test.
At least one of the plaintiffs won't have to wait for a court-approved plan to start working as a firefighter.
Jacob Bradley, 26, of Lynn -- who filed the suit along with his brother, Noah, and two other men after failing to get hired despite a score of 94 -- said he was notified yesterday by the Lynn Fire Department that he would be sworn in as a firefighter today.
"I'm anxious to get started," said Bradley, adding that he will be the first African-American firefighter appointed to the Lynn department since 1993. His father, Kevin, has been a Lynn firefighter for 29 years.
"We all believe we are great candidates for firefighters," said Noah Bradley, who is still hoping to be hired.
"It's not just about the score," he said. "We're all smart . . . and we are all physically fit, and any one of us could carry a 200-pound person out of a burning building."
