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NEW YORK (AP) - The mostly white Fire Department of New York discouraged racial diversity by using recruitment exams that inadvertently discriminated against blacks and Hispanics, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Monday in a civil rights lawsuit.
The complaint alleges that the Fire Department administered exams in 1999 and 2002 that, while not purposely or obviously racist, were littered with SAT-like questions that are do not test an applicant's ability to fight fires.
"The city's testing practices ... do not select the firefighter applicants who will best perform their important public safety mission, while disproportionately screening out large numbers of qualified black and Hispanic applicants," said Wan J. Kim, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C.
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