Opinion ID: 389939
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Trial Court's Initial Decision

Text: 11 In 1978, following a substantial period of discovery, an eleven-day trial with respect to liability was held before Judge Daly. The court found that the City had violated Title VII. It observed that although minorities comprised 41% of Bridgeport's population the Bridgeport Fire Department, 428 members strong, had only one minority firefighter prior to the 1975 exam. The court found that the 1975 exam did little to alter this imbalance: only eight of the 192 candidates who passed it were members of minority groups, and the pass rate for nonminority candidates was more than three times that for minority candidates. The court concluded that these statistics left no doubt that the firefighters exam had a disparate impact on the named plaintiffs and the class of persons they represent. 454 F.Supp. at 754. 12 As to the merits of the test itself, the court found that it was doubly flawed. First, the exam had no rational relationship to the skills needed in firefighting. The test was developed, by the consulting firm retained for that purpose, without compiling any list of critical work behaviors and with no effort to rank the rated skills in terms of their importance to the job. 2 454 F.Supp. at 755-56. Indeed, in handing down his order on remedy, Judge Daly noted that the Bridgeport Fire Chief had testified at the remedy hearing that there might be an inverse correlation between those who passed the exam and those who are most qualified to be firefighters. Id. at 759. For example, while the Fire Chief stated that superior physical ability and intelligence are the two most important attributes, the 1975 hiring process used simply a pass-fail physical agility test, and the 1975 written exam weighed negatively any high scores on comprehension questions, thus penaliz(ing) those who indicated that they were 'inquiring, curious, analytic, exploring, intellectual, reflective, incisive, investigative, probing, logical, scrutinizing, theoretical, astute, rational (and) inquisitive.'  Id. 3 Ironically, the court noted that the 1975 exam represented a decided improvement over some of the earlier civil service exams employed by Bridgeport. 454 F.Supp. at 757. 13 The second flaw in the 1976 exam lay in the City's selection of 12 as the minimum passing score, a choice that the court found bore no relation to 'normal expectations of proficiency.'  Id. 4 (quoting 19 C.F.R. § 1607.6 (1977)). The court found that lowering the passing score from twelve to six would have significantly alleviated the discriminatory impact of the exam. 14 The court concluded that the use of the 1975 exam could not be continued, and it awarded a variety of relief to minority candidates for firefighter positions. Because it had found the 1975 exam not job related, the court began with the premise that the firefighters exam administered in 1975 did not distinguish qualified from unqualified applicants. 454 F.Supp. at 759. Since testimony showed that the 84 firefighters hired while the case was pending were adequately performing their duties and since their scores on the non-job-related exam did not demonstrate that they were any better qualified than those who failed, the court found it fair to assume that all of the applicants who are able to pass the same agility test and medical examination will be capable of performing at least as well as the eighty-four men already hired. Id. 15 With the goal of remedying the disparate impact of the firefighters exam by placing those frustrated applicants on a parity with the eighty-four men who have been hired, 454 F.Supp. at 759-60, the court ordered the immediate hiring of Blacks and Hispanics who filed applications with the civil service office for the 1975 firefighters exam and who pass both the agility test and the medical examination. These applicants were also awarded backpay and seniority retroactive to October 1976. Once the 1975 minority applicants were hired, the City would have been required to make all future selections from a pool of qualified minority candidates until the number of minority candidates hired since 1975 equaled the number of white candidates hired since that time, and then to hire one-half of all firefighters from the minority pool until the number of minority firefighters totaled 125.