O’Reilly Distorts Justice Ginsburg’s Dissent In The Hew Haven Firefighters Case
It is obvious that Mr. O’Reilly did not read Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion, because if he had, he would have realized that much of what he said during his “Talking Points Memo” commentary was garbage.
Here are the points O’Reilly got wrong:
O’Reilly said:
00:39 – With many wrongs now righted, we are supposed to be a society where equal justice for all prevails.
I wish that were true, however that is not the case. take, for instance, the following:
- African Americans make up roughly 15% of the U.S. population, yet only 1% of the U.S. Senate, soon to be 0% (Roland Burris is not running in 2010).
- African Americans, on average, make $.75 to a white American’s $1.00.
- African Americans make up roughly 15% of the population, but make up over 50% of the prison population in America.
- As of 2002, 12 people have been executed where the defendant was white and the murder victim was black, compared to 178 black defendants executed for murders with white victims.
- In the city of New Haven 1n the 1970’s, the population was 30% African American and/or Hispanic, but minorities made up only 3.6% of the city’s firefighters.
- Today those numbers have increased, but the make up of the fire fighters in New Haven still does not adequately represent the population. It is also important to note that minorities in supervisory positions are almost non-existent.
This is only a snippet of what could be considered “wrongs that have not been righted.”
O’Reilly said:
01:09 – The test was pretty much standard issue…
No, in fact it was not “pretty much standard issue,” but even if it were standard issue, that does not ensure that it is an unbiased test. Several experts were brought in by the New Haven Civil Service Board (CSB) to analysis various aspects of this controversy. One issue raised was the type of test given.
One of the many experts brought in was Dr. Christopher Hornick, an industrial and organizational psychology consultant with 25 years’ experience with police and firefighter testing. He stated that there were other tests that exhibited significantly and dramatically less impact.
In addition to Hornick’s statement, Ginsburg also wrote that Department officials were not allowed to check the content of the test beforehand in order to ensure that the test was relevant to the department.
There were also concerns brought up by experts that called into question equal access to test materials to allow applicants to prep for the test.
O’Reilly said:
01:39 – She (Ginsburg) also said the written portion of the test was unfair to blacks because it contained a writing section.
This is a complete distortion of what Justice Ginsburg wrote in her dissenting opinion. She did not say, or even imply, that the writing section of the test was unfair to blacks. Her argument was that because the test was 60% written, that several other types of testing procedures that would be much more valid in terms of identifying quality candidates for promotion were ignored.
Dr. Hornick was quoted in Ginsburg’s dissent as saying:
I’ve spoken to at least 10,000, maybe 15,000 firefighters in group settings in my consulting practice and I have never one time ever had anyone in the fire service say to me, “Well, the person who answers — gets the highest score on a written job knowledge, multiple-guess test makes the best company officer.” We know that it’s not as valid as other procedures that exist.
Other procedures that exist would better identify:
- Leadership skills.
- Interpersonal skills.
- Management skills.
- Tactical skills.
O’Reilly said:
02:20 – Think about this. The firefighters take a legitimate test offered by the city, and because the test doesn’t come out the way Ginsburg and other liberal judges including Ms. Sotomayor want it to, they throw it out.
It has already been established that the test was not necessarily legitimate. Having said that, it was not Ginsburg and Sotomayor who originally wanted to negate the test results. It was the city of New Haven.
It is surprising that someone of O’Reilly’s political ilk, would be advocating that local forms of government be dictated to by the Federal government. That goes against everything that Republicans stand for when it comes to states’ rights.
Furthermore, Sotomayor did not “throw it out” as O’Reilly implied. She did exactly what judges are supposed to do, follow precedent, and let the case climb to a higher judicial body.
What O’Reilly, and Senators who are presently questioning Sotomayor on her judicial beliefs, have been criticizing Sotomayor for, was her statement that judges “make policy.” Yet in this case, they are criticizing Sotomayor for not creating policy, which is what she would have done had she overturned the Ricci case.
July 14th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
O’Reilly embraces anything that causes dissent, especially if it’s of the racial variety. Fuchs Noose is a waste of the airwaves as it serves no useful purpose regarding the dissemination of accurate information to the public, which could then be used to understand government policymaking.
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