New Haven Firefighters Get Hosed

Benjamin Kantack
UNL Political Science and Spanish Major

Students approaching finals week can surely sympathize with the story of Connecticut firefighter Frank Ricci.

Six years ago, according to the New York Times, Ricci had a once-in-a-decade chance to pass a promotional exam and earn the coveted rank of lieutenant. He made flashcards, participated in a study group, took practice tests, and even paid more than $1000 for someone to record his textbooks onto audio tapes.

Ricci’s hard work finally paid off…or so he thought. He finished sixth out of 77, and with fifteen vacancies available for promotions, he figured he had finally made the grade – and the rank of lieutenant. Unfortunately for Ricci, the top fifteen scorers on the test consisted of fourteen whites and one Hispanic – no blacks. In response to the dearth of African Americans in the top fifteen, the city of New Haven decided not to offer any promotions, according to the New Haven Independent.

“It’s something that shakes what you believe in. Because you believe if you work hard, you’re rewarded for that, and that’s not necessarily the case,”” said Matthew Marcarelli, whose grade of 93% made him the top scorer on the exam. “Every day I go to work I’ve got to pin this lieutenant’s badge on me, it reminds me I got screwed out of a captain’s badge because of the color of my skin. That gets to you,” he told ABC News on April 10.

Despite the fact that New Haven paid $100,000 of the taxpayers’ money to a testing company to create a test that would not disadvantage any particular group, the city concluded that, since none of the black participants scored within the top fifteen, the test must have been racially biased.

“To have the city throw [the test] out because you’re white or because you’re not African American is insulting,” said Ricci.

Fast forward to the present day, where Ricci and nineteen other local firefighters, calling themselves the “New Haven 20,” have brought their racial discrimination lawsuit all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The case Ricci v. DeStephano is scheduled for argument on April 22, with a decision anticipated by the end of June.

This will be the first time in decades that the Supreme Court has examined the use of race as a factor in hiring or other job-related practices, and the first chance for the Roberts Court to verbalize its position on racial issues in regards to civil servants. The verdict could greatly alter the role of race in the American workplace.

The AP article reduced the dispute to a single, broad question: “Do minorities and women still need legal protection from discrimination, or do the monumental civil rights laws that created a more equal nation now cause more harm than good?”

Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, the fifteen most qualified firefighters for promotion in New Haven, Connecticut, could all be non-blacks? The Supreme Court will be asking itself this question for the next few months – and their decision will undoubtedly have an impact on race relations in America.

One thing is certain: “The fire isn’t going to discriminate against a person whether he’s black, white, or Hispanic” said firefighter Ben Vargas. “It’s going to treat that person the same way.”

Perhaps one day the New Haven Fire Department will learn from the fires it fights and judge its employees, as Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “[not] by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”