Update on New Haven Briscoe Firefighter Lawsuit....

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

by La Shawn Barber

http://www.acri.org/blog/2010/04/27/update-on-new-haven-briscoe-firefighter-lawsuit/

In Ricci v. DeStefano, over a dozen white firefighters and one Hispanic scored high enough on a promotion exam to qualify for promotions. Because no blacks scored high enough to qualify, however, the city threw out everyone’s test results for fear of disparate impact lawsuits. The U.S. Supreme Court called foul and said the move was unconstitutional.

After the firefighters requested their promotions, a group of black firefighters tried to block them. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision, they contended, they still had the right to challenge the test’s validity. Eventually, the qualified firefighters were promoted.

In a separate suit, a black firefighter in New Haven named Michael Briscoe claimed the promotions exam had a disparate impact on blacks. Specifically, he said that giving more weight to the written part of the exam over the oral was a disadvantage to blacks. The written portion of the test was weighted 60 percent; the oral 40 percent. Briscoe scored higher on the oral than any other exam taker.

Last week, a federal judge dismissed Biscoe’s suit. The court hasn’t released the opinion yet.

Try to understand what Briscoe and others who sue for disparate impact are saying. Look beyond the superficial surface-level discrimination claim and see the real claim. When blacks who earn lower scores on civil service exams sue under disparate impact, they’re implying that blacks can’t or shouldn’t be expected to compete with whites on pencil-and-paper civil service tests. Not the LSAT or the MCAT, but civil service tests. They are broadcasting a belief that they’re inferior. They are telling the world it’s discriminatory to even expect them to read and write well.

In our backward, PC world, requiring every applicant for a firefighter’s job and candidate for promotion to take an objective hiring or promotion exam, regardless of race, is suspect. The government used to do the opposite and make subjective, race-based judgments about who to hire and promote. The civil service exam was designed to end this practice. Now, such exams are perceived as tools of discrimination. And people go to court and publicly make the claim!

Some blacks pay lip service to equal treatment, expressing the desire to be seen and judged as an individual instead of “black person,” but in practice, they seem to abhor it. How sad. It takes courage to be free.

White Cops Get Say in Decades-Old Discrimination Case.....

White Cops Get Say in Decades-Old Discrimination Case

Connecticut Post – CtPost.com

Michael P. Mayko, STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/White-cops-get-say-in-decades-old-discrimination-465096.php

A federal appeals court Tuesday allowed a group of white Bridgeport police officers to be heard on a proposed order to settle a 32-year-old racial discrimination case brought by black officers against the department.

It also gives the officers the ability to challenge any court action in the order that impacts their future by allowing Bridgeport to adjust promotion exams that are believed to discriminate against blacks.

But the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel in New York City - consisting of Judges Jose A. Cabranes, a former chief district judge in Connecticut; Barrington D. Parker, who sits on several Yale University boards. and U.S. District Judge Carol Amon of Brooklyn, N.Y. - didn't stop there.

The panel questioned why the 32-year-old Guardians case, which resulted in the federal court overseeing operations of the Bridgeport Police Department's dealings with black officers, is still active.

Parker, in a strongly worded final paragraph, writes: "this case was filed in 1978 ... the world has turned over many times since then. Except in highly unusual circumstances, it is the business of cities, not federal courts or special masters, to run police departments. At some point in time, this litigation has to be ended."

The panel then expressed confidence that U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton, who is presiding over the case, "will look hard for that point."

"This is a poster case for so-called reform litigation run amok," said Karen Lee Torre, a New Haven lawyer who obtained intervention for Bridgeport Police Officers Todd Hoben, Jorge Cintron, David Garcia, Mark Belinkie, Mark Graham, Martin Henue, William Reilly and James Borrico, and for Kurt Hoben, who is applying for a police officer position.

"This ruling is another positive step toward ending a racket that has gone on for decades and siphoned off millions of taxpayer dollars, all squandered on lawyers and 20 years of payments to the judge's appointed special master, an arrangement the legality of which I look forward to challenging."

This ruling comes on the heels of last summer's U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning a federal judge's decision allowing New Haven to retest fire department lieutenant and captain candidates because no blacks scored high enough to be promoted.

There are some similarities. Arterton is the presiding judge in the Guardians' case and the New Haven firefighters case while Torre represented the successful white candidates in both.

The Supreme Court decision also led to Bridgeport settling a reverse discrimination suit brought by 12 white firefighters, who challenged the rescoring of a 2007 fire lieutenant's exam, which knocked several out of possible promotions.

The Bridgeport Guardians, a group of black police officers, sued the city and its police department in 1978 claiming racial discrimination of black officers. Following a trial, Chief U.S. District Judge T.F. Gilroy Daly, now deceased, found widespread discrimination in terms of the assignment, promotion and discipline of black officers. He appointed William Clendenen, a New Haven lawyer, as a special master to oversee the treatment of black officers within the department.

Over the decades, Clendenen conducted numerous hearings and wrote several rulings critical of the department and its management. Damages, as well as Clendenen's fees, were paid by Bridgeport. A $900,000 fine was imposed against the city for violating court orders, but never paid.

"Throughout this period, the only constant has been that the police department ... has been run under the supervision of a federal court and its special master," Parker wrote.

But times have changed. The ruling points out that 15 percent of the supervisors today are black and 32 percent are minorities as compared to 1983, when all supervisors were white. Additionally, two blacks served as police chief in the past decade.

"The substance of the 2nd Circuit's ruling is an encouraging sign of an end to this protracted litigation," said Betsy Edwards, an associate city attorney. "The presence of the intervening officers in the remaining stages of this case will assist the Department in moving forward with a shared sense of unity. The city shares the 2nd Circuit's belief that `the business of running police departments is not properly left to federal courts and special masters,' and is confident that the progress that the department has made over the past year will continue and will justify the long overdue conclusion of this federal oversight."

Antonio Ponvert, the Guardians' lawyer, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Following a four-hour hearing on Aug. 6, 2008, Arterton accepted a proposed order to end the case, which includes returning authority to the chief in assigning officers to geographical areas, filling 50 percent of the vacancies in specialized units and hearing complaints of racial discrimination.

However, Arterton retained oversight of the order's implementation.

New Haven Wins Again!....

Judge Dismisses Firefighter’s Suit


The New Haven Independent
by Thomas MacMillan
April 22nd, 2010
http://newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/in_black_firefighter_v._city_case_dismissed/id_25542

Six months ago, firefighter Michael Briscoe (Facebook picture above) filed suit against the city over the 2003 promotions test that led to an historic Supreme Court decision. On Wednesday, a U.S. District Court Judge tossed out Briscoe’s case.

Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. issued a ruling on Wednesday granting a motion for dismissal by the City of New Haven. Attorneys for the city had filed the motion in response to a complaint brought against the city by firefighter Briscoe.

Briscoe sought to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant. He argued that he was unfairly denied promotion because of the way the city scored a 2003 promotions exam.

That exam was the basis for the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, in which a mostly white group of 20 firefighters sued the city. They claimed they were unfairly denied promotions after the city tossed out the results of the test when African-Americans scored poorly. Frank Ricci and his co-plaintiffs went on to win their case in the Supreme Court in June 2009. Soon after that, Briscoe filed his complaint.

Briscoe’s complaint alleged that New Haven weighs the oral and written components of promotions examinations differently than other cities do, in a way that has a disparate impact on African-Americans. Briscoe topped the oral portion of the exam but did poorly on the written section. He sought promotion and back pay.

In addition to his suit against the city, Briscoe has filed a motion to intervene in the Ricci case. Ricci is back in front of Judge Janet Bond Arterton in her Church Street courtroom. The fate of Briscoe’s motion in the wake of Judge Haight’s decision is unclear.

Judge Haight did not release an opinion to explain his dismissal of the case on Wednesday. A Memorandum of Opinion will “issue subsequently,” he wrote.

David Rosen, Briscoe’s attorney, said he had not made a decision about whether to appeal the judge’s decision. “We feel strongly about the case but we want to take a close look at the judge’s decision,” he said.

Karen Torre, attorney for Ricci and his co-plaintiffs, welcomed the judge’s decision. “This junk lawsuit has finally and rightly been dismissed,” she wrote in an email. “Maybe now the NHFD can recover and begin to heal. While there are, unfortunately, some lawyers out there looking to hitch their wagons to the Ricci case and start another war, everybody else is really interested in peace at this point and in doing something far more positive. Mr. Rosen’s effort to prevent that goal from being reached has failed and we’re glad it did.”

Victor Bolden, attorney for the city, also welcomed the news. “Today, the City of New Haven achieved another step towards concluding issues relating to the 2003 promotional examinations in the New Haven Department of Fire Service,” he said. “The decision confirms what should be a basic principle of law: a municipality should not be held liable for following a ruling of the United States Supreme Court.”

A GREAT Article That Puts The Center For Constitutional Rights Into Perspective...

Michael Ratner of the CCR

.

.

.

This is a great article by Marc A. Thiessen of The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/) that puts the CCR and it's agenda into proper perspective. Everyone should be familiar with the agenda of those whom they find themselves consistently opposed to.



The Dean of the Gitmo Bar

Meet Michael Ratner, lead terrorist defender.

The Weekly Standard
BY Marc A. Thiessen
March 29, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 27
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/dean-gitmo-bar?page=2

In recent weeks, controversy has erupted over demands that the Obama administration release the names of lawyers working in the Justice Department who once represented or advocated for captured al Qaeda terrorists. But amid the debate, one name has thus far mostly escaped mention: Michael Ratner. Don’t know him? You should. Ratner is the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the organization that is leading the legal crusade on behalf of the al Qaeda detainees.

The center was founded in 1966 by William Kunstler and a group of radical lawyers. Its name is an Orwellian play on words—implying that the organization’s purpose is to defend our constitutional system when its real objective is just the opposite. As Kunstler once told the New York Times, he considered himself a “double agent” whose goal was “working within the system to bring down the system.”

For more than four decades, the center has been true to this mission. Since its founding, CCR lawyers have represented violent radicals, Communist fronts, cop-killers, and sworn enemies of the United States. But following the attacks of September 11, 2001, CCR made its way into the judicial mainstream. In 2004, the center won a major legal victory when the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in Rasul v. Bush that foreign combatants captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan can challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. This ruling unleashed a flood of habeas corpus cases, and suddenly CCR found itself coordinating the work of hundreds of pro-bono lawyers from top flight law firms filing suit on behalf of terrorist detainees. According to its website, “CCR has led the legal battle over detentions and conditions at Guantánamo for more than six years, and coordinates the efforts of more than 500 pro bono lawyers” fighting to release Guantánamo detainees in what it terms the “so-called ‘war on terror.’ ”

In addition to playing a coordinating role in over 200 detainee cases, CCR directly represents a number of terrorist detainees. CCR’s current clients include Jose Padilla, the American-born terrorist sent by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up apartment buildings in a major American city; Mohammed al-Qahtani, the 20th hijacker in the 9/11 plot, who would have been on United Flight 93 had he not been turned away by immigration officials at the Orlando airport; and Majid Khan, an al Qaeda operative groomed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for suicide missions against America.

Ratner is a longtime member in good standing of the hard left. He is described in Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side as having “been a leader of the legal brigade of the progressive movement” since “the Vietnam war years.” Mayer wrote that Ratner had “gotten under the skin of foreign dictators and multinational corporations by suing them for human rights violations in the U.S. courts.”

But Ratner did not get under the skin of all foreign dictators. He had a soft spot for the regime of Fidel Castro and particularly for Che Guevara. In 1997, Ratner published a book on Che, declaring the Cuban revolutionary a Heroic Guerrilla. Ratner describes his experience of hiking in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra mountains in 1976, following the path of Che, when he came upon a group of Cuban schoolchildren: “Each was holding a handwritten placard, and singing the words written thereon: ‘Seremos como Che.’ ‘We will be like Che.’ Tears streamed down my cheeks, my energy was renewed, and I completed the hike.”

In his book, Ratner wrote evocatively of his love of Che. So while Ratner reviles America’s treatment of terrorists held at Guantánamo Bay, he idolizes the man who created Cuba’s KGB-style political prisons and served as Castro’s chief executioner. I asked Ratner if he had ever worked for Cuban prisoners. “No one’s asked me to do it; I haven’t done it,” he said. Of course, no one asked Ratner to represent Majid Khan, Jose Padilla, Mohammed al-Qahtani, or the other al Qaeda terrorists on CCR’s client list. CCR sought them out. The fact is Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights have made it their business to represent America’s enemies for more than four decades. This was their business during the Cold War, and it is thriving during the war on terror.

The reason Ratner represents so many of America’s enemies is that Ratner believes America is evil. In his book on Che, Ratner wrote:

Che saw the United States as a great evil, and not only because of its attacks on Cuba. He called it a “barbaric civilization,” a “so-called democracy” where U.S. elections merely determine who is to be the jailer of the North American people for the next four years....It is a sentiment that could not be more accurate if said today.

In our interview, I read him this passage and asked whether he still feels that America is evil. There was a pause, and then he said, “I do believe that today.” Surprised, I said, “You do believe that today?” He quickly added, “No, I’m thinking about that.” After another long pause, Ratner finally said: “You know, I think, as I’ve said to you before, America has a lot of practices and policies that I don’t like, that I think are bad. It has a number of things that I like, that I think are good. And my object is to make this country adhere to the law, and that’s what my goal has been, really, throughout my life.” Referring to the quotation, he asked, “What was that, nine, eleven years ago?” — as if 1997 were ancient history. Again, he did not repudiate his writings, but replied, “My best view about what I think of America is what I just told you.”

Ratner is nothing if not consistent. As recently as 2006, in an interview with Socialist Worker Online (yes, such a thing exists), Ratner called America a “police state,” compared the Bush administration to Nazi “storm troopers,” and equated 9/11 to the burning of the Reichstag, which Hitler used to establish his absolute grip on power:

“Really, the best analogy for people to understand is the Reichstag fire in Germany in 1933, when the parliament of Germany was burned to the ground. That night, Hitler and the storm troopers gained power....They used the Reichstag fire the same way Bush used 9/11....[T]hat’s really the beginning of the coup d’etat in America.” This is the man behind the campaign to grant the right of habeas corpus to captured terrorists.

Ratner may despise Guantánamo, but it has been a fundraising boon for the CCR. In 2002, the center reported total revenues of $2.4 million. By 2007, that number had doubled, to $4.9 million. But these donations understate CCR’s fundraising prowess. The center has also solicited tens of millions of dollars in “in kind” contributions from more than 600 law firms, which have given their time pro bono to represent Guantánamo detainees as part of CCR’s “Global Justice Initiative.”

In our interview, Ratner described this effort. He explained that in 2004, after the Rasul case opened the door for captured enemy combatants to contest their detention in civilian courts, “we put out a call to other firms across the country...to start representing people. And we started the next year [with] probably 100 people, and over the next year got to about 600.” In addition to recruiting attorneys for terrorist clients, he says, CCR helps by “training the lawyers from these firms how to do these habeas cases, and that involves everything, once we got access to the client, from how you deal with your clients [to] what issues you have to be sensitive with Muslim clients.” Ratner adds, “We also set up a ‘Guantánamo listserv,’ ” a confidential online forum allowing “Guantánamo lawyers [to] share their perspectives and thoughts on how the cases are being litigated. And we follow up when there is a new client who needs counsel. We’ll reach out and get the client” and then connect them with a lawyer.

The major law firms working on detainee cases do not downplay their connections to Ratner; to the contrary, many embrace him. One firm listed in CCR’s 2008 annual report as part of its “Global Justice Initiative” is Jenner & Block, where Obama associate attorney general Thomas Perrelli served as managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office. According to Jenner’s website, the firm has worked with CCR, which it describes as “spearheading the coordinated efforts of all counsel” in Guantánamo cases. Jenner and Ratner also share a client: Jose Padilla.

Another firm working with CCR is Covington & Burling, Eric Holder’s law firm for eight years before he became Barack Obama’s attorney general. The firm’s website proudly notes that in 2008 it received the Center for Constitutional Rights’s “Pro Bono Law Firm of the Year” award. According to the American Lawyer, Covington & Burling lawyers spent 3,022 hours on Guantánamo litigation in 2007, more than on any other pro bono effort that year. At an average rate of $400 per hour, that comes to more than $1.2 million in donated legal services. Other well-known law firms working with CCR in its Global Justice Initiative include Morrison & Foerster; Wilmer Hale; Sullivan & Cromwell; Manatt, Phelps & Phillips; Holland & Hart; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman; Shearman & Sterling. And there are many, many others.

It is doubtful that many of the senior partners at these firms are familiar with Ratner or his objectives in the habeas campaign. But in our interview Ratner made no bones about his goals: “For me there’s only two answers for people at Guantánamo or the KSMs of the world. You either try them — on the evidence you have you charge and try them — or you release them.” I asked specifically about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. “It would apply to anybody,” Ratner said.

Ratner is not satisfied with harnessing the American legal system to aid the release of terrorists. CCR is also working with foreign prosecutors to indict top Bush administration officials for war crimes. Ratner explained to me that this was the future of CCR’s litigation effort. “We tried to do it here in various civil cases, suing [former Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld...for torture in Guantánamo,” he said. “But in the end, what we did was we launched a series of criminal cases in Europe, particularly in Germany and France, and now of course we’re cooperating in Spain.” These cases, Ratner said, send a message to our government that “if you’re not going to investigate your own torture program...Europe under universal jurisdiction will be able to go forward and do that.”

Ratner has been surprisingly quiet in the recent controversy over the disclosure of which Justice Department lawyers have represented Guantánamo detainees. But a few years ago, when the top Defense Department official in charge of detainee affairs, Charles “Cully” Stimson, questioned the propriety of American law firms representing terrorists, an infuriated Michael Ratner gave a long interview in which he compared Stimson to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Stimson, he said, had employed “a McCarthyite tactic that really shows, in my view, some of the legacy of where some of these people in the Bush administration hark back to and would like to see in this world.” The publication where Ratner made those comments? Revolution Newspaper, the self-described “voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA.”

During the Cold War there were Americans devoted to undermining U.S. policy in the struggle with Soviet Communism. Today in the war on terror, there are left-wing attorneys working to undermine U.S. policy in the struggle with violent Islamic extremism. As the story of Michael Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights shows, they are sometimes the very same people.


Marc A. Thiessen, a columnist for the Washington Post, is the author of Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.

Our Newest Executuve Board Member....

We are pleased and proud to announce that Lt. George Rodriguez of L-27 has joined the Executive Board of Merit Matters. George has been with the FDNY for 14 years and was promoted out of L-22. Prior to the FDNY George served our country in the US Navy and was deployed to the Persian Gulf on the USS Gallery. He will be our Sergeant at Arms.

We thank George for agreeing to help us in our mission and welcome him to Merit Matters.