The lawyer for the city of New Haven, Conn., says the decision to scrap the results of a promotional test that yielded no black firefighters was done keeping in mind decades of litigation against it by African-American firefighters over promotions.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in the city were unfairly denied promotions because of their race.
Victor Bolden, the head of the Corporation Counsel in New Haven, tells Melissa Block that while the city is "disappointed" with the decision, it is "focused on what the law requires us to do and meeting our obligations to follow it."
"I think what's very, very important for people to understand that the city of New Haven was in a very, very difficult situation," Bolden says. "While the Supreme Court says now you shouldn't worry about the Title VII issues the city was concerned about, at the time there were certainly viable issues and issues of great concern," he says.
Title VII refers to a section of the Civil Rights Act.
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