Opinion ID: 389939
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Supplementary Presentations of Evidence

Text: 33 An evidentiary hearing was held, limited to the three issues specified by the district court. The defendants offered expert testimony as to various candidate selection methods by which the disparity in pass rates on the 1975 test could be eliminated, assuming the passing level were lowered from twelve to six. 6 Plaintiffs offered expert testimony to show that lowering the passing score from twelve to six would not eliminate the disparate impact of the exam because it would merely decrease the disparity in pass rates from 20.5 percentage points to 14.2 percentage points, still a highly significant statistical difference. 7 The defendants' expert conceded that merely lowering the test score, without also adopting one of the methods he espoused, would not eliminate the disparate impact of the exam. 34 Testimony on issues other than those specified in the court's prehearing order was rejected. Thus, when the defendants proffered the testimony of a statistician and a chart to show that the percentage of minorities in the Bridgeport labor market of persons over the age of 18 with a high school diploma would not exceed 18%, the court sustained plaintiffs' objections on the ground that this issue had been fully litigated at trial and the evidence was beyond the scope of the hearing. Similarly, when plaintiffs called the City's Comptroller to testify on the subject of the City's use of federal funds in the fire department, to support their Title VI claim, the court sustained the City's objection that such testimony would be outside the scope of the hearing. The court stated, after ascertaining that the City's budget was published, that judicial notice would be taken of the budget. 35 It does not appear that the entire published budget was ever presented to the court. Subsequent to the hearing, plaintiffs filed the affidavit of a paralegal employed by plaintiffs' counsel, annexing photocopies of four pages described as part of the City's Public Employment Employee Roster. The affidavit stated that these pages showed that in 1971 and 1972, some federal money, provided under the Emergency Employment Act, was used by the City to hire personnel for the Fire Department.