A ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the highly publicized New Haven, Connecticut, firefighters' case affirms that the country's laws against discrimination protect all Americans.
The Supreme Court ruled today that white firefighters in New Haven were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge. In a 5-4 decision, the court said New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no black and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results. The city said it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities. Hans von Spakovsky, a visiting legal scholar at The Heritage Foundation, says the court made not only the correct legal decision, but also the correct moral decision. "It's a terrific decision," he comments, "but what should worry Americans is that four justices on the Supreme Court actually would have voted to say that discrimination is legally okay as long as you're discriminating against certain groups." Von Spakovsky says the ruling should harm Judge Sotomayor's nomination to the high court. "She very clearly was deciding that...legal discrimination is just fine as long you're discriminating against certain groups -- in this case, white firefighters," says von Spakovsky. "And I frankly don't believe that any judge who thinks that that kind of discrimination should be legal should be on the Supreme Court." The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up Sotomayor's nomination July 13.
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