Firefighter Firestorm Continues

The back and forth battle over a controversial firefighter promotion exam in New Haven has a new wrinkle. 

A group of black firefighters now wants to stop promotions for white firefighters who won a reverse discrimination case before the U.S. Supreme Court.  The black firefighters argue they still have the right to challenge the validity of a controversial promotional exam that some view as racially biased.

The white firefighters sued New Haven after the city threw out results of the 2003 promotion exams for lieutenants and captains when too few minorities did well. In June, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor.

The attorney for the white firefighters filed papers in U.S. District Court on Friday asking that lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci, and 13 others be promoted. Attorneys for New Haven filed similar papers.

But attorneys for seven black firefighters filed court papers on Monday seeking to intervene, saying there still has been no finding that the promotional tests were valid.

The black firefighters argue their rights will be "irrevocably impaired" if the city certifies the promotions lists without the court first allowing them to be heard, the New Haven Register.

The new filing came almost simultaneously to the city and Ricci plaintiffs submitting proposed orders in U.S. District Court that, if approved, would lead to the promotions of 14 of the so-called New Haven 20.

The motion takes the city to task not so much for throwing out test results, in fact, some black firefighters lobbied the city in 2004 to do just that. Rather, they focus on the hasty manner in which the city did it, and the subsequent "weak" defense it presented on appeal in the 20 firefighters’ discrimination lawsuit, the Register reports.

"If the city makes such promotions without inquiring into the exams’ validity, then it is making a race-conscious decision to promote those whites who used their skin color as a central, divisive basis for their lawsuit," the motion says. "Regardless, at this juncture, it is clear that the city has used race as a strawman in all sorts of ways to attempt to benefit itself, to the detriment of others."

The city responded with this statement: "We really just want to move forward," Jessica Mayorga told the Register.

The city hadn’t yet decided how to respond to the new motion, she said.

Copyright Associated Press / NBC Connecticut

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