The New Haven Case

MANIFESTO

Connecticut is much in the news today as

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments this morning on a reverse discrimination complaint by a group of white New Haven firefighters who claim they were denied promotion because the city illegally rejected their top promotional examination scores when black colleagues scored relatively poorly on the same test.

The case, Ricci v. DeStefano, is the first to come before the court under Chief Justice John Roberts that broadly raises the issue of race in the work place. The court's decision could reshape hiring and promotional policies for millions of the nation's public employees—and possibly for private employers as well.

NPR and a number of other outlets were all over this story earlier today, and while I'm, at best, of two minds on this issue, the court's ultimate decision is one that, as the article points out, could be extraordinarily consequential.