A lawsuit representing 6,000 Black plaintiffs who once sought to be Chicago firefighters seems poised to move forward after arguments made Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court.
by Wendell Hutson Defender Staff Writer A lawsuit representing 6,000 Black plaintiffs who once sought to be Chicago firefighters seems poised to move forward after arguments made Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court. “We have not got the victory yet but it is coming,” said Ezra McCann, 60, a former Chicago firefighter. “In my 30 year career with the Chicago Fire Department I had to always fight racism that I am convinced still exists there.” McCann, who retired in 2007 as a captain, added that the city has and continues to treat “Black folks wrong” in more than one way. “Black firefighters were never really promoted in a timely manner. Instead the city promoted their patronage people first,” he told the Defender. While a decision by the Supreme Court is not expected until the fall, several justices said it does not appear the statute of limitations expired before the suit was filed, which legal experts said would mean the suit is still valid. However, the city’s Deputy Corporation Counsel Benna Solomon, disagreed and said the law states plaintiffs must file job discrimination suits within 300 days, which Solomon argued the plaintiffs did not do. He added that the first suit was filed 430 days later – on March 31, 1997 – and that the clock started ticking when the city announced January 26, 1996 the use of test scores to determine if applicants qualified to become firefighter trainees. But plaintiffs disagree and said a new act of discrimination happened each time the score was used in selecting trainees between May 1996 and October 2001. In 1995, right before the exam was administered, the Chicago Fire Department employed 5,000 employees and 71.9 percent were white, 20.6 percent were Black and 7.5 percent were Hispanic, according to Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department. Today the department employs 5,120 and 68.5 percent are white, 17.5 percent are Black and 12.3 percent are Hispanic. Plaintiff Johnny Helm, a 45-year-old electrician, was among the Black applicants who did not score above 89. He attended the Supreme Court hearing Monday and said the city is trying to stop the lawsuit any way it can. “The city is not trying to hire Blacks for the fire department,” he told the Defender. “You have to be white or know somebody nowadays to get hired by the city.” Originally, a U.S. District judge agreed with the black applicants in this case, but the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision. The federal appeals court said the limitation period began when the city placed the applicants into the middle tier. The case is Lewis v. Chicago and it alleges that a previous entrance exam used by the city to weed out unqualified applicants was discriminatory against Blacks, in part, because even though Black applicants scored above 64 but below 89, it resulted in whites making up the majority of the top-scoring group. “Essentially any applicant who scored below a 64 was deemed unqualified. But the city set a second cutoff score of 89 points and it is that score that triggered the suit,” Helm explained. When the written test was administered in 1996 at the United Center 26,000 applicants took the test and nearly half were Black, according to Helm. The lawsuit was under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in employment. John Payton, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the cutoff score had an adverse impact on qualified Black applicants. “Chicago used an unlawful cutoff score to determine which applicants it would hire as firefighters,” he said. A number of Black firefighters, who did not want to be named, said they support the suit for diversity sake, which they claim is needed within the CFD. Should the suit be allowed to move forward and later prevail in court, legal experts said the city would have to pay millions of dollars in damages. This is not the first time the Supreme Court has been faced with a discrimination suit on behalf of firefighters. In a July 2009 case the court ruled by a 5-4 decision that New Haven, Conn. had violated 20 white firefighters’ civil rights by not promoting them and instead chose to throw out an exam where no Blacks scored high enough to be promoted to lieutenant or captain. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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