The Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) recently launched a series of lawsuits against multiple local police and fire departments, alleging that the use of written exams and physical fitness tests in hiring processes discriminates against minority applicants.
The DOJ's lawsuits rely on a controversial "disparate impact" theory, which holds that statistical racial disparities in hiring practices are indicative of discrimination, even in the absence of explicit evidence of bias. The theory suggests that if one racial group is disproportionately affected by a policy, the policy itself may be deemed discriminatory. Critics argue that this approach overlooks individual differences in test performance and unfairly assumes that disparities in outcomes are due to racism.
The Daily Wire reports how the DOJ's civil rights unit recently filed a lawsuit against South Bend, Indiana, claiming that the city's written examination for prospective police officers discriminates against Black applicants, while a physical fitness test disadvantages female applicants. The lawsuit also asserts that these tests unlawfully exclude certain groups from consideration for public safety positions, despite the fact that the majority of Black applicants generally pass the tests. The lawsuit demands cash settlements for Black applicants who failed, while excluding those who passed from the financial compensation.
In Durham, North Carolina, a settlement was reached with the DOJ after a lawsuit alleged that Black applicants failed the firefighter entrance exam at a higher rate than other applicants. As part of the agreement, the Durham Fire Department agreed to pay nearly $1 million to those who failed the exam and to hire up to 16 of them. The DOJ argued that the exam had an unjustifiable disparate impact on Black applicants, even though some questions on the practice test were directly related to firefighting, such as determining how many hoses would be needed to reach a burning building.
Critics argue that hiring individuals who cannot meet basic math and physical fitness requirements could jeopardize the quality of emergency services despite the DOJ's own description of some tests as "not relevant" to the job contrasts with examples showing that some of the exam content is indeed related to tasks that police officers and firefighters must perform, such as calculating distances for equipment or assessing the value of stolen property.
In May, the DOJ reached a settlement with Cobb County, Georgia, following allegations that the county's firefighter hiring practices disproportionately disqualified African American applicants due to credit checks and written exams. More recently, Maryland State Police agreed to pay $2.75 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the DOJ over physical fitness tests that allegedly discriminated against women and written tests that disproportionately excluded Black applicants.