Ricci V. DeStefano was a case that was argued in the Supreme Court of United States on April 22, 2009 and ruled on June 29, 2009. In New Haven city, firefighters would undergo some tests as examinations, the results of which were used to determined whether someone had qualified for promotion to either Lieutenant or captain positions. The results of these tests showed that the white candidates performed better than the other minority candidates’ i.e. the blacks. This outcome sparked uproar among black candidates and local politicians who issued threats to the City. The city then discarded the results based on racial discrepancy. The white and Hispanic candidates, who had passed the exams but were not promoted, thereafter sued the City officials for throwing away the results basing their action as discrimination against their race according to Title VII of Civil Rights Act (1964). This racial discrimination case brought by the Hispanic and White firefighters was used by Ricci to challenge the decision reached by New Heaven’s city officials to use examination results to offer promotion to the firefighters.

The much disputed examinations had the following procedures. The City’s rules for firefighters promotion was divided in to either the merit system or the firefighters union’s agreement. The merit system required the vacancy position be filled by one of the top three candidates who passed the examinations. The Union’s agreement required the tests to be both written and oral, with 40% of the score related to oral test and 60% on the written test. With the two agreements an independent company that specialized in designed nominations was contracted by the City to design the examinations for fire and police department. This particular case was facilitated by the examinations that New Haven firefighters took in 2003. In the Captain exam 64% of the candidates who had passed were white while 37.5% were Hispanic and Whites. In the lieutenant exam 58.1% of the successful candidates were white, 31.6% were black and 20% were Hispanic.

Following these results and the standards set by the EEOC, no black person was qualified for any lieutenant or captain poison. This led to open criticism and public debate .Some firefighters who deemed the results as discriminatory threatened the City if they used them while some of them said they were fair and threatened if City did not use them. Faced with these two forces of do and don’t, City decided to discard the tests, an issue that was not taken lightly by the white and Hispanic candidates who scored highly in the tests and would have acquired promotion if the results would have been validated. They therefore sued the City on allegation of discrimination based on Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause found in the U. S Constitution (Fourteenth Amendment).

Based on this new legal rule, the Supreme Court held that the City’s concerns about disparate impact of the results did not give a good explanation to its decision. The City was therefore found guilty of discriminating against the white and Hispanic candidates.