By DAVID STOUT - NY Times - June 29, 2009 - WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday, in a case with enormous implications for workplaces across the country, that white firefighters in New Haven suffered unfair discrimination because of their race when the city scrapped the results of a promotional exam.

The case was rooted in tests given in 2003 for promotion to lieutenant and captain. The exams yielded no black firefighters eligible for advancement, prompting the city to throw out the results and promote no one. That move, in turn, triggered a lawsuit by 18 white firefighters, one of them Hispanic, who claimed racial discrimination, or what is often termed “reverse discrimination.”

The ruling reverses a federal district court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had found in favor of the city, and sends the case back to the lower courts for further action. (Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, had ruled in the city’s favor as a Second Circuit judge.) The ruling on Monday, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, acknowledged that the city faced a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, as Justice David H. Souter put it when the case was argued on April 22.

FULL STORY