Mass. agrees to hire more minority police, firefighters

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The state of Massachusetts has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit by requiring 20 cities and towns to offer police and firefighter jobs to minority applicants who took civil service exams that a federal judge later ruled were discriminatory.

The agreement, which went to a judge for approval yesterday, requires the hiring of 66 minority candidates statewide who scored high on police or fire exams between 2002 and 2005, but were denied jobs when higher-scoring white candidates were hired.

A judge ruled last year that the state’s 2002 and 2004 firefighter exams discriminated against minorities. Another trial was scheduled to start soon to consider claims that the 2003 and 2005 police exams were also unfair to minorities.

Harold Lichten, the lawyer who filed the suit against the state and the city of Lynn on behalf of four black firefighter applicants, said they agreed to the settlement because the state is now using a new exam that appears to be much fairer to minorities.

“Our goal was to secure an exam that actually predicts job performance … so minorities would have a reasonable shot of doing as well [as white applicants] on the exam, so there wouldn’t be resegregation of departments,” Lichten told The Boston Globe.

The state agreed to the settlement to prevent an extensive appeals process and because it believes the new exam is more fair, according to the attorney general’s office.

U.S. District Judge Patti Saris ruled last year that the old tests continued to rank applicants based on how well they scored on written exams that test cognitive ability, even though such tests were found discriminatory in the early 1970s.

She found that many questions on the exam had nothing to do with firefighting and the state didn’t take into account factors such as life experience and personality.

Under the proposal, both sides have come up with a list of candidates who would have been hired if the tests had not been discriminatory.

Candidates, who will still have to pass physicals and background checks, will be eligible for up to $18,750 each in back pay.

The agreement also says that another 41 minority applicants who were hired as police and firefighters would have been hired sooner if the tests weren’t discriminatory. Those 41 applicants could get up to $13,415 each in back pay.

“I want people to know we are probably some of the best candidates for this job and we are not just trying to get the job the easy way,” said Jared Thomas, 24, of Lynn, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

The communities that would be required to offer police or firefighter jobs to minority applicants are: Ashland, Bedford, Belmont, Beverly, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Everett, Fall River, Leominster, Lynn, New Bedford, North Adams, North Andover, Quincy, Revere, Sharon, Southbridge, Taunton and Waltham.

(Associated Press)