Ricci v. DeStefano

Ricci v. DeStefano
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 22, 2009 Decided June 29, 2009
Full case name	Frank Ricci, et al. v. John DeStefano, et al.
Docket nos.	07-1428 08-328
Citations	557 U.S. 557 (more) 129 S. Ct. 2658; 174 L. Ed. 2d 490
Case history
Prior	Summary judgment for defendants, 554 F. Supp. 2d 142 (D. Conn. 2006), aff'd, 264 F. App'x 106 (2d Cir. 2008), summary order withdrawn, aff'd, 530 F.3d 87 (2d Cir. 2008), rehearing en banc denied, 530 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 2008), cert. granted, 555 U.S. 1091 (2009).
Holding
Before an employer can engage in intentional discrimination for the asserted purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional, disparate impact, the employer must have a strong basis in evidence to believe that it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action. Because New Haven failed to demonstrate such strong basis in evidence, its action in discarding the tests violated Title VII.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer Samuel Alito
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito
Concurrence	Scalia
Concurrence	Alito, joined by Scalia, Thomas
Dissent	Ginsburg, joined by Stevens, Souter, Breyer
Laws applied
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.

Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557 (2009), is a United States labor law case of the United States Supreme Court on unlawful discrimination through disparate impact under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Twenty city firefighters at the New Haven Fire Department,^[1] nineteen white and one Hispanic, passed the test for promotion to a management position, yet the city declined to promote them because none of the black firefighters who took the same test scored high enough to be considered for promotion. New Haven officials invalidated the test results because they feared a lawsuit over the test's disproportionate exclusion of a certain racial group (blacks) from promotion under a disparate impact cause of action.^[2][3] The twenty non-black firefighters claimed discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Supreme Court held 5–4 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII because the city did not have a "strong basis in evidence" that it would have subjected itself to disparate impact liability if it had promoted the white and Hispanic firefighters instead of the black firefighters. Because the plaintiffs won under their Title VII claim, the Court did not consider the plaintiffs' argument that New Haven violated the constitutional right to equal protection.