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| Re: NYFD Exam Biased Says Judge (477981) | |||
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Re: NYFD Exam Biased Says Judge |
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Posted by trainsarefun on Fri Jul 24 00:14:04 2009, in response to NYFD Exam Biased Says Judge(Re: What's Sonia Sotomayor's racial background?), posted by LuchAAA on Wed Jul 22 22:53:51 2009. Thoughts?I will probably go on for some length, so be warned. As (likely) the only person here who has read and skimmed the 93-page opinion, available here, let me wade into this. I have also skimmed some pages of the firefighter exams posted by NYT here. While the first is probably a useless exercise for most, I do suggest reading the second. I don't know much about Judge Garaufis. I haven't heard praise or complaints. So there isn't much to say on that front. On to the case.... First, the case was brought by the United States, under the prior administration. The Vulcan Society 'intervened' as plaintiffs, so basically without dragging it out, think of them as plaintiffs too, although the case was brought by the US. Said Society is an association of Black FDNY officers. The US sued on behalf of Black and Hispanic firefighter candidates. Plaintiffs pleaded a disparate impact violation of title VII with a slight twist. They alleged that FDNY, DCAS, NYC, etc, knew about the disparate impact of the exams administered - the lawsuit concerns exams given 1999-2007 - for a very long time. Thus they alleged that the known disparate impact was exploited by defendants such that their continued reliance on such exams constituted intentional discrimination. Plaintiffs moved for summary judgment, which the court granted. The first big issue is causation. There 2 tests, and there was disparate impact. Did the test cause the disparate impact? The court relies on statistical significance, and drawing a causal inference therefrom. I think that the court is mistaken in its causal inference; I don't dispute the statistics. Proving the causation is an element of plaintiffs' case. From what I see in the tests, they are going to correlate strongly with IQ. People like me who are idiot savants and score highly on such tests will do better than those who aren't. As it turns out - and it seems to me an open question, not that I've looked into it at length, as to why - IQ, i.e., test taking aptitude, and its distribution within racial populations doesn't turn out the same in every group - indeed there are large disparities. If it is these disparities cause disparate results on the exams, as I believe that they do, then I'm not sure how plaintiffs can prove causation. If DCAS had instead administered SAT tests, they would have ended up with similar disparity, which quite undermines the idea that it's something special about the exams actually administered by DCAS. Of course, the US can respond by saying that idiot savants who take such tests and score very well don't necessarily make good firefighters. And I can't speak for others, but yes, my IQ tells me to run away, not towards, the burning building. To be sure, NYC would never expressly make the argument that I've given, although they made it implicitly. But I think that its existence shows that plaintiffs can't succeed on their claim. However, I think that the court was correct to rule that defendants didn't make out their business necessity defense. Defendants conceded that what they rated as the two most important skills - oral comprehension and expression - why that isn't just one thing called 'oral communication' escapes me!, but anyway, those 'two' things couldn't be tested directly, since DCAS wasn't going to do thousands of interviews. Very problematically, some of defendants' experts who decided what the areas that would be tested should be, conceded basic confusion on the points, including one panelist who admitted that at that the time he likely couldn't define inductive reasoning. And it also came out that the test was only testing for about half the important skills, and as already mentioned, not the two most important ones. That said, it's my view that the business necessity defense ruling against defendants, while correct, was academic. I don't think that plaintiffs proved causation. Accordingly, their motion for summary judgment should have been denied. |
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