Today the Supreme Court issued a 5 to 4 decision in favor of the New Haven, Connecticut firefighters in a reverse discrimination case. The white firefighters had passed a promotion exam for Captain and Lieutenant in 2003 but no selections were made because white firefighters scored so much higher than their black and brown counterparts that very few preferred minorities would have been promoted to the seven open Captain vacancies, nor to the eight open Lieutenant vacancies, if the exam scores had been used.
The white firefighters took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, including going through the 2nd Circuit on which Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayer sat on a three-judge panel. Sotomayer joined a brief opinion rejecting the appeal of the case and then voted to deny a rehearing.
