Vulcan Society of New York City Fire Department, Inc. v. Civil Service Commission

490 F.2d 387
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedNovember 21, 1973
DocketNos. 414, 415, Dockets 73-2287, 73-2317
StatusPublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 490 F.2d 387 (Vulcan Society of New York City Fire Department, Inc. v. Civil Service Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Vulcan Society of New York City Fire Department, Inc. v. Civil Service Commission, 490 F.2d 387 (2d Cir. 1973).

Opinion

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge:

As in Chance v. Board of Examiners, 458 F.2d 1167 (2 Cir. 1972), and Bridgeport Guardians, Inc. v. Members of the Bridgeport Civil Service Comm’n, 482 F.2d 1333 (2 Cir. 1973), we are confronted with a claim that a city has unintentionally discriminated with respect to the employment of minority group members. Here, as in Chcmce, the city is New York; the alleged discrimination is with respect to persons allowed to qualify for the entering grade in the Fire Department. The action was brought under the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and its jurisdictional counterpart, 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3).1

I.

Plaintiffs, five minority individuals who had applied for employment with the Fire Department and two organizations representing minority firefighters, brought this suit as a class action in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. Their complaint alleged that the procedures used to select New York City firemen discriminated against blacks and Hispanics in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The defendants were the Civil Service Commission of the City of New York, the City’s Department of Personnel, the chairman of the Commission and director of the Department, two members of the Commission, and then Fire Commissioner Lowery, hereafter referred to as the municipal defendants. Attacking on a broad front, plaintiffs first sought injunctive relief to prevent the Fire Department from making any more appointments based on an eligibility list reflecting performance on Exam 0159, a written civil service examination given on September 18, 1971. In addition, they sought to block further use of various other screening measures, including the Department’s minimum height requirement, a requirement that every fireman have a high school or high school equivalency diploma, and the bar, arising from the combined effect of § 487a-3.0(b) of chapter 19 of the Administrative Code of New York City and § III-4.3.2(b) of the Rules and Regulations of its Civil Service Commission, against any applicant who had been convicted of a felony or of petty larceny.2

At a hearing on plaintiffs’ application for a preliminary injunction, Judge Weinfeld took evidence on the alleged discriminatory impact of the written examination and on the question whether the test was sufficiently related to a fireman’s job to survive constitutional attack. At the conclusion of the seven-day hearing, he suggested that the parties agree to treat the hearing as a final trial on the merits of the case under F. R.Civ.P. 65(a)(2). Both parties agreed, [391]*391but the plaintiffs requested that several points, including the automatic disqualification issues, be left open. Judge Weinfeld subsequently ruled that any further evidence on these points would have to be submitted before the court’s decision was handed down, and that the decision would be final as to all issues in the case except for the challenge to the Fire Department’s promotional examination, which would be left open for later consideration.

On June 12, in a comprehensive opinion, the district judge, 360 F.Supp. 1265, ruled that the written examination had a discriminatory impact and that it was not sufficiently job-related to justify its use. He enjoined further reliance on the challenged eligibility list, without prejudice to the parties’ applying for interim relief which would permit appointments from the list on a quota basis until a new examination could be given and a new eligibility list established. Because the injunctive relief would benefit all persons similarly situated, Judge Weinfeld declined plaintiffs’ request that he designate a class. As to the automatic disqualification issues, he ruled that it was unnecessary to consider those questions, stating:

This disposition makes it unnecessary to consider the other grounds urged by plaintiffs in support of their claim, particularly since little evidence was adduced with respect thereto upon the hearing. The submissions as to these matters were included in post trial briefs or affidavits and in some instances raise issues of fact, the resolution of which would require reopening of the trial.

He added there was serious doubt whether the plaintiffs had standing to raise either the criminal conviction bar or the high school diploma requirement, since it appeared from the complaint that none of the named plaintiffs was subject to exclusion for those reasons.

Two months later, after having allowed intervention by non-minority candidates who had qualified under Exam 0159 but had not yet been appointed, the district court issued an order granting interim relief. The order instructed that in making future appointments from the challenged eligibility list, defendants would be required to hire one minority applicant for every three non-minority applicants hired. In an accompanying memorandum, the court further directed the municipal defendants “to exert every good faith effort to accelerate the establishment of a new list.”3 The defendants, intervenors, and plaintiffs all appealed from various portions of the district court’s decision and order. We denied an application by the defendants and intervenors for a stay but brought the appeal here on an expedited basis. As is usual in cases of this sort, we have had a number of amicus briefs filed on behalf of various individuals and organizations. However useful amicus briefs may be on an issue of first impression in this circuit, see Chance, supra, 458 F.2d at 1169 & n.5, they only add to our burdens when the controlling principles have been established and the parties are so capably represented as here.

II.

Under Chance and Bridgeport Guardians our analysis must be three-pronged. Was Judge Weinfeld “clearly erroneous” in finding that Exam 0159 had had a “racially disproportionate impact” ?4 [392]*392If not, did he err in concluding that the City had not made the requisite showing that Exam 0159 was sufficiently job-related; that is, did the City fail to prove that the disproportionate impact was simply the result of a proper test demonstrating lesser ability of black and Hispanic candidates to perform the job satisfactorily? If the district court was correct on that point also, we reach the third issue, the propriety of the relief.

The municipal defendants do not here challenge the findings of racially disproportionate impact, but the .intervenors do. The basic facts are these: Roughly 11.5% of the 14,168 applicants who entered the examination halls were black or Hispanic. Yet minority members comprised only 5.6% of those who had passed the written, physical and medical examinations at the time of the hearing. Non-minority candidates thus survived the screening process at a rate more than twice that of minority candidates. Perhaps even more important, 18.4% of the whites who took the examination ranked in the top 4000 and survived the physical5 while the comparable figure for minority candidates was 6.-6%, a disparity of 2.8 to 1.

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Bluebook (online)
490 F.2d 387, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/vulcan-society-of-new-york-city-fire-department-inc-v-civil-service-ca2-1973.