WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the largely minority city of New Haven, Connecticut had unreasonably denied promotions to white firefighters, reversing a decision by high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
In the narrow ruling, the nation's top court ordered the city in the northeastern state to reinstate the results of a 2003 test in which only white firemen scored high enough to be promoted.
The city had thrown out the results of the tests after no black firefighters scored high enough to be promoted.
Sotomayor -- President Barack Obama's nominee to become one of the nine Supreme Court justices -- last year was one of three judges in an appeals court that upheld New Haven's decision to throw out the firefighters' test results.
But in the tight five to four ruling Monday, the Supreme Court said the city was wrong to scrap the results.
"All the evidence demonstrates that the city rejected the test results because the higher scoring candidates were white," the justices said in their decision, which was read out by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
"Without some other justification, this express, race-based decision-making is prohibited."
Although the decision is expected to feature in next month's Senate confirmation hearings for Sotomayor, who is due to replace justice David Souter -- who retired Monday -- it is not expected to stall the arrival on the high court bench of the first Latina justice.
The White House said the ruling would have no impact on the confirmation chances of Sotomayor, pointing out that former president George W. Bush's two nominees, Samuel Alito and John Roberts, also had cases reversed.
"Judge Alito had three cases reversed by the Supreme Court... Judge Roberts actually had a case reversed by the Supreme Court as the sitting chief justice of the Supreme Court," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
"I don't foresee that this will represent anything that would prevent her from a seat on the Supreme Court," he said.
Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac polling center, said neither a reversal nor the fact that three-quarters of Americans disagreed with Sotomayor's ruling on the New Haven firefighters would dull her chances of being confirmed.
"All law court judges get reversed at one time or another. She was going to be confirmed before the Supreme Court ruled on New Haven, and she'll be confirmed after the Supreme Court ruled on New Haven," Brown told AFP.
And he insisted that although 71 percent of respondents to a Quinnipiac poll earlier this month said the Supreme Court should ditch the decision backed by Sotomayor and order the high-scoring firemen promoted, "...absent a blockbuster that we don't know about, she's going to be confirmed."
In another poll conducted by Quinnipiac, Americans were in favor of the choice of Sotomayor for the Supreme Court bench by a margin of two to one.
Four judges, including Souter, voted against reinstating the Connecticut test results.
The dissenting justices said the decision "pretends that the city rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white. That ignores substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used.
"By order of this court, New Haven, a city in which African-Americans and Hispanics account for nearly 60 percent of the population, must today be served -- as it was in the days of undisguised discrimination -- by a fire department in which members of racial and ethnic minorities are rarely seen in command positions," the dissenting opinion said.
The case dates back to 2003, when 118 New Haven firefighters sat exams to qualify for promotion to the officer ranks.
When the results of the test showed that white firefighters had outperformed minority candidates, the city of New Haven found itself caught between a legal rock and a hard place.
One group of firefighters threatened to sue for discrimination if promotions were made based on the test results, and others said they would sue if the city ignored the results and denied promotions to candidates who did well.
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