Headline: “Supreme Court rules for white firefighters in bias case”
“A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that the city of New Haven, Conn., discriminated against white firefighters, repudiating a key decision by court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.”
The Supreme Court Decision (read it here) is a victory for the White firefighters, and a resounding defeat for the Liberals whose blind support of Affirmative Action has led them to apply race-based decisions to hiring and promotions.
But I’d like to break open the story just a bit, and provide additional support to the firefighters who passed their exams, met the requirements for promotion, but were discriminated against.
The article states that the reason why the firefighters were not promoted was because "the city rejected the test results because too many white and not enough minorities would be promoted," as mentioned by Justice Kennedy. "Without some other justification, this express, race-based decision-making violates Title VII's command that employers cannot take adverse employment actions because of an individual's race."
The New Haven officials explained their decision by blaming the exam: there must have been an inherent bias in the test that essentially victimized the Blacks and Hispanics that took the test.
I contend that this explanation does not hold water. The exam result was not an aberration: it is entirely consistent with Connecticut standardized test results in public schools.
Let me provide a disclaimer at this junction: my analysis is not a scientific study. Out of curiosity, I did what the reporters should have done; I pulled up the Connecticut State Education standardized test scores to see if the pass rate on the firefighter’s exam was grossly out of synch with education results, by ethnicity. Due to limitations on time, I could not perform an exhaustive study of all grades over multiple years. But that study should have been performed by Defense attorneys (I don’t know if it was) and by journalists who actually want to dig into stories and provide some substance. Unfortunately, most reporters lack basic curiosity and reasoning skills.
Let’s look at just one result, as a starting place for comparison.
On the Connecticut Master Test, 4th Generation for Grade 8: 2008, only 9.4% of Whites scored at or below “basic”. 16.8% scored Proficient, and 73.8% scored “at Goal” or “Advanced”. By comparison, 42.4% of Blacks scored below “proficient”, 29.3% scored proficient, and 28.3% scored “at Goal” or “Advanced”.
It is logical to assume that only the best and brightest of firemen are expected to advance to become Chiefs. Since how they perform their duties, how well they understand the laws, rules, protocols, and procedures will directly impact the safety of their crews and the public they serve, there are lives on the line. So it is also logical to assume that a great deal of the material they must master is not just firefighting methods that can be learned on the job, but also book learning that must be mastered through study. It is therefore not only conceivable, but quite logical, that a firefighter who is exceptional at a fire may not have “the right stuff” to be a chief. The individuals one would want to become a fire chief would belong to the groups that, when students, would have met or excelled at the goal scores.
The Connecticut state scores indicate that Whites excel academically at a rate greater than twice that of Blacks. If you combine “Proficient” with the “Goal and Advanced” categories, the gap narrows slightly, but still only 57.6% of Blacks scored Proficient and above combined, compared to 90.6% of Whites. (80.7% of Hispanics scored Proficient and above combined)
So, New Haven developed a written test to determine the extent of mastery of these subjects, but then balked at the results of the tests. According to the article: “The African American pass rate on the written exam was roughly half that of white applicants. …None of the top 19 scorers in the competition for captain's and lieutenant's positions were African American.”
Why is that a surprise? The test results for African Americans on the firefighter’s exam were wholly consistent with the scores of African Americans on state educational standardized tests.
Justice Kennedy astutely assessed the situation and declared: "There is no evidence that the tests were flawed."
The real failure here is the educational system that, despite decades of influence by the National Education Association, has yet to figure out how to better educate minorities. It is common knowledge that across the country, when minorities fail to meet standardized test expectations, they are “passed on” anyway. Principals regularly pressure teachers to adjust their students’ grades to allow them to graduate and keep the number of failing students at a politically acceptable level.
Sotomayor’s appeals court decision would have allowed the New Haven officials to implement a double standard. They had created a test that would have determined which applicants would have received a promotion based upon their score. But when bureaucrats decided that too many Whites had passed, these same bureaucrats would have gone back, figured out how to rig the test so that more minorities passed, and tried again.
Sotomayor’s intention, is to utilize the courts as a tool for social engineering. Just like the principals who tell their teachers to change their students’ scores, similar race-based decision by activist (possibly even racist) judges would institutionalize discrimination against citizens whose skills make them qualified for positions, but who are nevertheless disenfranchised based solely upon the color of their skin.
Showing posts with label Supreme Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Supreme Court. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Second Amendment barely upheld.
If you haven’t read the Supreme Court’s decision on the Second Amendment, you should.
I'm disgusted that the decision was only 5 to 4. How can there be FOUR Supreme Court Justices who DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THE REST OF US ALL UNDERSTAND!?
Actually, let me rephrase that. I'm sure they understand what we understand. But they have a vision for America that is different than what the founding fathers envisioned, and so they actively try to mis-interpret the constitution to fit it to their arrogant ideas.
But, anyway, I am extremely amused by the language used by Justice Antonin Scalia. It is unusual, I think, for the level of sarcasm and biting humor which appears throughout the argument. You can tell that there must have been some intense discussion between Scalia and Stevens. And it is also clear that Scalia, having garnered a majority decision, and knowing that this is a truly historic decision, enjoyed very much jabbing Stevens for his foolish attempts to creatively alter the meaning of the constitution.
Just for clarity, here is the Second Amendment:
The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.” In interpreting this text, we are guided by the
principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood
by the voters; its words and phrases were used in
their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical
meaning.”
So Stevens sets out to try to find hidden meaning in the text, by suggesting first that the phrase means that only state militia (national guard) could have weapons, and that “keep and bear” does not mean to own and carry… It becomes clear that Stevens has a desired outcome in mind and sets out to change the meaning of the words in order to fit it to the desired outcome.
And Scalia takes him to task personally.
Here are couple of jewels {bolding is my emphasis}:
***
In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petitioners
and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes)
idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a
hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the
actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an
idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No
dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have
been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried
that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy
to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the
hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning
would cause the protected right to consist of the right
to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no
commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of
the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase
“keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word
“Arms” would have two different meanings at once:
“weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of
“bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying
“He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled
the bucket and died.” Grotesque.
If “bear arms” means, as we
think, simply the carrying of arms, a modifier can limit
the purpose of the carriage (“for the purpose of selfdefense”
or “to make war against the King”). But if “bear
arms” means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the
carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply
cannot add “for the purpose of killing game.” The right “to
carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game”
is worthy of the mad hatter. Thus, these purposive qualifying
phrases positively establish that “to bear arms” is
not limited to military use.11
The next selection is from a footnote, where Stevens was trying to twist the meaning of the amendment so that the citizen can “keep” or store a weapon but cannot “carry” or bear it:
14 Faced with this clear historical usage, JUSTICE STEVENS resorts to
the bizarre argument that because the word “to” is not included before
“bear” (whereas it is included before “petition” in the First Amendment),
the unitary meaning of “to keep and bear” is established. Post,
at 16, n. 13. We have never heard of the proposition that omitting
repetition of the “to” causes two verbs with different meanings to
become one. A promise “to support and to defend the Constitution of
the United States” is not a whit different from a promise “to support
and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
***
I tell you what, between the recent horrendous decision that violates state rights regarding the death penalty for child rapists, and the clear attempt by Stevens to twist the constitution, there can be no doubt that Stevens needs to be removed from the court—which is probably not possible. We definitely need to get more constructivist judges onto the court to counter Stevens and Bader.
I'm disgusted that the decision was only 5 to 4. How can there be FOUR Supreme Court Justices who DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THE REST OF US ALL UNDERSTAND!?
Actually, let me rephrase that. I'm sure they understand what we understand. But they have a vision for America that is different than what the founding fathers envisioned, and so they actively try to mis-interpret the constitution to fit it to their arrogant ideas.
But, anyway, I am extremely amused by the language used by Justice Antonin Scalia. It is unusual, I think, for the level of sarcasm and biting humor which appears throughout the argument. You can tell that there must have been some intense discussion between Scalia and Stevens. And it is also clear that Scalia, having garnered a majority decision, and knowing that this is a truly historic decision, enjoyed very much jabbing Stevens for his foolish attempts to creatively alter the meaning of the constitution.
Just for clarity, here is the Second Amendment:
The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.” In interpreting this text, we are guided by the
principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood
by the voters; its words and phrases were used in
their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical
meaning.”
So Stevens sets out to try to find hidden meaning in the text, by suggesting first that the phrase means that only state militia (national guard) could have weapons, and that “keep and bear” does not mean to own and carry… It becomes clear that Stevens has a desired outcome in mind and sets out to change the meaning of the words in order to fit it to the desired outcome.
And Scalia takes him to task personally.
Here are couple of jewels {bolding is my emphasis}:
***
In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petitioners
and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes)
idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a
hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the
actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an
idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No
dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have
been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried
that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy
to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the
hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning
would cause the protected right to consist of the right
to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no
commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of
the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase
“keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word
“Arms” would have two different meanings at once:
“weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of
“bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying
“He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled
the bucket and died.” Grotesque.
If “bear arms” means, as we
think, simply the carrying of arms, a modifier can limit
the purpose of the carriage (“for the purpose of selfdefense”
or “to make war against the King”). But if “bear
arms” means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the
carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply
cannot add “for the purpose of killing game.” The right “to
carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game”
is worthy of the mad hatter. Thus, these purposive qualifying
phrases positively establish that “to bear arms” is
not limited to military use.11
The next selection is from a footnote, where Stevens was trying to twist the meaning of the amendment so that the citizen can “keep” or store a weapon but cannot “carry” or bear it:
14 Faced with this clear historical usage, JUSTICE STEVENS resorts to
the bizarre argument that because the word “to” is not included before
“bear” (whereas it is included before “petition” in the First Amendment),
the unitary meaning of “to keep and bear” is established. Post,
at 16, n. 13. We have never heard of the proposition that omitting
repetition of the “to” causes two verbs with different meanings to
become one. A promise “to support and to defend the Constitution of
the United States” is not a whit different from a promise “to support
and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
***
I tell you what, between the recent horrendous decision that violates state rights regarding the death penalty for child rapists, and the clear attempt by Stevens to twist the constitution, there can be no doubt that Stevens needs to be removed from the court—which is probably not possible. We definitely need to get more constructivist judges onto the court to counter Stevens and Bader.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
