Opinion ID: 566091
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Does the Dade County Firefighter Position Require

Text: 40 Special Qualifications? 41 In Croson, Justice O'Connor reaffirmed the significance that the Court places on the nature of the job receiving race-based preferences. Id.; and see discussion of Croson, supra. To determine discriminatory exclusion, unskilled positions are compared to a different statistical pool than for jobs requiring special training. Id., and see Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 337-38, 97 S.Ct. at 1855-56, 52 L.Ed.2d at 416-17. 42 The Supreme Court has given only limited guidance in distinguishing skilled positions from unskilled. In Hazelwood, 433 U.S. at 308 n. 13, 97 S.Ct. at 2742, 53 L.Ed.2d at 777, for example, the Court stated that the truck driver position at issue in Teamsters required no special qualifications because the job skill there involved ... is one that many persons possess or can readily acquire. 26 Likewise, the Court has ruled that entry-level spots in a job training program require no special prior abilities because they are, in fact, designed to provide expertise. Johnson, 480 U.S. at 632, 107 S.Ct. at 1452, 94 L.Ed.2d at 631. On the other hand, the public school teachers at issue in Hazelwood, according to the Court, did work in a profession requiring special expertise. 27 43 Candidates for selection as a firefighter for Dade County have to meet certain basic requirements (see n. 6, supra ). However, as the district court found, none of these requirements reach the level of special expertise. There is no basis for rejecting as clearly erroneous, F.R.Civ.P. 52(a), the trial court's finding that firefighter applicants are unskilled for purposes of comparative statistical analysis. 44