Minority firefighter applicants may be entitled to recover more than $100 million in back pay from New York City because FDNY tests were discriminatory, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who has ordered new tests and named a monitor to oversee fire department hiring, said the total wages lost by minority applicants because of discrimination totaled $128 million, but that number would likely be reduced based on amounts they earned from other employment.
Garaufis put the blame for the big number squarely on the city's political leaders who, he said, knew that the 90 percent white department was not hiring for a decade, and failed to solve the problem.
"Despite numerous entreaties . . . to the FDNY and, eventually, to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city did not act on this knowledge," Garaufis wrote. "It has been in the city's power to prevent or remedy the need for damages proceedings for a decade, and it has not done so."
New York City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo, whose lawyers have tangled with Garaufis throughout the litigation and have appealed his order for a monitor, called the damages findings "erroneous."
"As the court itself noted, any damages the city ultimately must pay will be reduced by the amount each member of the class earned," Cardozo said in a statement. "When all the proceedings have been completed, the damages, if any, that the city will have to pay will be far less than $128 million."
The lawsuit over fire department hiring was brought in 2007 by the federal government and the Vulcan Society, a black firefighters group. Garaufis found that an additional 293 black and Hispanic firemen would have been hired if two tests administered beginning in 2001 had not been discriminatory.
A pool of about 2,200 minority applicants who took the tests will be eligible to collect damages based on the $128 million in lost pay from 2001 to 2010. But Garaufis said court-appointed masters will make findings about the wages and benefits those unsuccessful applicants earned in other jobs, and reduce the damages proportionately.
Interest owed by the city on the remainder will then be added, and additional damages will be calculated for 2011.
Richard Levy, a lawyer for the Vulcan Society, estimated that the final figure will be between $80 million and $90 million, and said it will likely include an additional amount to compensate for differences in the "quality of life" of applicants who had jobs with less "prestige" than firefighting.
"The city could have avoided the immense cost of compensating victims of discrimination if it had changed its hiring practices 10 years ago," he said.
Copyright 2012 - Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
