The Vulcan Society, an association of Black firefighters, has won a major legal victory in New York City—but the limited terms of the court remedy mean the struggle will need to continue to bring equity in that city’s fire department.
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The Vulcan society has fought for decades to break through the deeply-entrenched racism of the New York Fire Department. For years, the Vulcan Society carefully documented longstanding and deliberate discrimination against Black applicants to the NYFD.
The Center for Constitutional Rights filed two formal complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, one in 2002 for the Vulcan Society and one in 2005 for individual Black and Latino firefighters.
One focal point of the dispute was a written test that had been long criticized as irrelevant to determining a qualified applicant for firefighting. There were appeals to politicians and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but the city and fire department refused to revise their hiring practices.
Only a consciously racist and exclusionist policy by New York City and the Fire Department could explain that out of 11,500 firefighters, only 2.9 percent, or 335, were Black in 2007. Latino representation in the force was little better at 4.5 percent.
In 2007, with such overwhelming evidence of deliberate discrimination against Black applicants and other people of color, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the city.
CCR attorney Anjana Samant told Liberation: “When the DOJ filed suit, it was still the Bush administration. It’s no secret that under the former administration, fighting racism was not among its top priorities. Despite that, when they learned what the Vulcan Society had come up with, and with the EEOC finding in our favor, they looked at the results and decided to actually sue. That speaks to how bad the situation was, and is.”
The Vulcan Society joined the DOJ suit as a plaintiff, with CCR filing on their behalf.
On Jan. 13, federal judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that the NYFD’s hiring practice, was “… part of a pattern, practice and policy of intentional discrimination against [B]lack applicants that has deep historical antecedents and uniquely disabling effects.”
It is significant that the ruling not only asserted that the hiring practices harmed Black applicants, but that the discrimination was intentional.
On Jan. 21, Garaufis announced his remedy: Of every five hires, the NYFD must hire two Black and one Latino applicants from the roughly 7,400 Black and Latino people who took the entrance exam between 1999 and 2002, until 293 Black and Latino workers are hired into the fire department.
Those who are hired from that pool will receive retroactive seniority and back pay as if they had been hired when they originally applied. Of the rest of the 7,400 applicants who were discriminated against, many will be able to file for financial compensation, depending on how they fared in the other application tests. The awards may run in the tens of millions of dollars.
Garaufis turned down the plaintiffs’ request to impose larger hiring quotas to assure a more representative workforce. Samant explained: “Even after the 293 Black and Latino people who must be hired, it will bump up the percentage of Black firefighters to 4.5 percent, still an abysmal percentage. We certainly don’t view that as a total fix. As the judge has started crafting the remedies we are hopeful the whole package will be a lot more effective.”
Garaufis ruled that the city must change its hiring practices, and indicated he may appoint a special monitor to oversee the process.
The city attorneys announced they will appeal. The white-dominated United Firefighters Association joined with the city to formally oppose the DOJ lawsuit.
A history of racism
The UFA has historically played a virulently racist role to help maintain a virtually all-white fire department.
When two of the four policemen who gunned down African immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999 were fired from the NYPD, the UFA supported their hiring into the fire department.
After the 9-11 World Trade Center bombing, the UFA stridently opposed the placing of a statue honoring the firefighters who died in the rescue effort, because a Black, a white and a Latino firefighter were depicted in the statue.
As former Vulcan Society president Paul Washington told Liberation in 2007, “That statue never went up because white firefighters objected to firefighters of color being portrayed.”
“The man who objected the most, Steven Cassidy, was running for union president,” Washington said. “He championed the cause to remove the statue. Hardly anyone in the union knew him before that, but because he yelled and screamed about that issue for the white firefighters, it ended up getting him elected for union president. It gives you an idea of what it is like in the fire department.”
The struggle by Black firefighters’ associations, in league with Latinos and other communities of color, was the main force that broke down racist barriers in major city fire departments across the country. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have set back that progress, including last year’s Ricci v. DeStefano ruling, which restored an advancement test that discriminates against Black and Latino firefighters in New Haven, Conn.
The New York City ruling is a major step on the long road to justice—but much more is needed. This partial but undeniable victory would not have been possible without the tireless struggle waged for decades by the Black firefighters and their allies, who will continue to be at the forefront of the battles to come.
