New Haven Fire Department

New Haven Fire Department

Imagine you are a mid-level manager at a company that uses a test based promotion system. Now visualize that you scored high enough on a test to be promoted but you are not because not one single minority testing for the same position scored high enough on the test. This is what happened in New Haven, Connecticut. According to Totenberg (2009), in 2003 the New Haven Fire Department gave a test to candidates eligible for promotion to lieutenant and captain. The tests were administered and the results revealed that the Hispanic and African-American firefighters scored considerably less compared to their fellow White firefighters. Out of the 15 positions available only one Hispanic and no African-Americans would have won a promotion based on the test results. The Civil Service Board examined the results and decided the test was flawed. This resulted in no promotions. The question is, “Did the city of New Haven act reasonably in rejecting the test results based on the lack of minority representation?” I believe the city did act unreasonable on the pretext of deontological and utilitarian reasoning against affirmative action.

When speaking of the New Haven’s Fire Department promotion situation, one has to speak of affirmative action which is the principle in which the decision to find the test results invalid was based. Allen (2003) describes affirmative action as a way in which the government promotes the hiring and promotion of groups that have historically suffered job-related discrimination. She further states that affirmative action has evolved from a program aimed at resolving past discrimination to one that seeks to balance the representation of race and gender in the workforce. New Haven’s affirmative action influenced decision to reject the firefighter’s test results was wrong under deontology under the arguments of reverse discrimination, merit, and quotas.

Dictionary definitions (n.d.) defines reverse discrimination as “the discrimination in hiring, college admissions, etc. directed against members of certain social or racial groups, as white males, thought of as being dominant or having benefited from past discrimination against minority groups who are now favored, often as a result of affirmative action.” Reverse discrimination is deontological in nature because it deals with the infringement on an individual’s rights. When the white firefighters of New Haven scored high enough on their test for promotion they had the right to be promoted. Instead they were reverse discriminated against based solely on their race and were not allowed to be promoted. While trying to make things more equitable among the firefighters, the city of New Haven instead infringed on the rights of their firefighters. These firefighters scored higher than their peers on the test and should have been promoted. According to Dorf (2009), the Supreme Court also