High Court Poised To Closely Weigh Civil Rights Laws

It also means the court's decisions are often nuanced, narrowed by the facts of the case and the intricacies of the law at hand, rather than laden with the broad pronouncements that often accompany public and political discussions of race.

"People see Supreme Court decisions as deciding these great questions for the country," said Washington lawyer Virginia A. Seitz, who has defended race-conscious policies before the court. "But lawyers see it another way, and I think the court sees it another way."

Still, the case of the firefighters, who have dubbed themselves the New Haven 20 and even have a Web site and T-shirts, provides the court a particularly human example of what they say is government intervention that goes so far to protect minorities that it discriminates against whites.

"It's all hot-button," Payton acknowledges.

The lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci, is a veteran firefighter who said in sworn statements that he spent thousands of dollars in preparation and studied for months for the exam. Ricci said he is dyslexic, so he had tapes made of the test materials and listened to them on his commute.

The firefighters' longtime attorney, Karen Lee Torre, did not allow her clients to talk to reporters -- other than for a segment on conservative commentator Sean Hannity's show on Fox News -- but Ricci said in a sworn statement, "I relied in good faith on the promise that effort and not race would determine who would be promoted."

When the results of the 2003 exams came back, only white firefighters, including one who is Hispanic, scored high enough to be considered for the openings for lieutenants and captains. All 27 black firefighters who took the test were below the cutoff.

After tumultuous public hearings, with minority groups arguing that the tests were flawed and the white firefighters saying officials were caving to political pressure, the city's Civil Service Board voted not to certify the results. The promotions remain in limbo.

The city argues that the test it commissioned, in which 60 percent of the score came from a multiple-choice questionnaire and 40 percent from an interview, must have been biased, despite its best intentions. It is not specific about the problems with the test, though it says the exam did not measure "command presence" and should have given more weight to the interview.

At any rate, the city says it was bound by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires employers not to rely on hiring or promotional tests that have a "disparate impact" on minorities unless they can show a "business necessity."

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. (D) is not talking to reporters about the case, either. The city's corporation counsel, Victor A. Bolden, said the city was placed in a position where it was bound to be sued by one side or the other and opted to "pause" and reconsider how promotions should be made.

"I certainly have sympathy for the plaintiffs, but at the end of the day it was the wrong test," Bolden said.