The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were discriminated against because their race touched on a familiar topic in local fire departments. And there remains a feeling among some white firefighters that the upper echelons of the D.C. fire department’s leadership are mostly reserved for black firefighters, according to attorney James Maloney. “There’s a feeling … that the reverse discrimination still goes on,” said Maloney, who represented two dozen white firefighter captains who sued the city in 2004, alleging that they were unfairly passed over for promotion because of their race. A jury sided against the white firefighters in 2007.
Complaints of reverse racism are not unique to the District. In Prince George’s County, six white firefighters sued the county in 1993 alleging that county had an illegal quota system in place designed to raise the percentage of black firefighters from below 20 percent to 40 percent. The white firefighters won that case, after the Supreme Court let stand an appeals court ruling that said the county had an illegal “informal caps” on the number of whites and men who the county could hire each year, according to published accounts. White firefighters in the Washington region have been alleging that they’ve been overlooked for promotions because of their race since the 1970s.
A federal appeals court ruled that five white battalion chiefs in the District were bypassed illegally in favor a black firefighter for the department’s second-ranking position in 1974, according to court records and published accounts. That decision came in April of 1986, only months after a white firefighter settled with the city for $41,000 in back pay after a federal judge ruled that the city had “unlawfully retaliated” against the firefighter “after he complained of racial bias in promotion,” the Washington Post reported at the time.
A firefighter union official told the Post that there was a “pattern” of discrimination against white firefighters. A year later a federal appeals court struck down the department’s minority hiring plan, which required that 60 percent of firefighters hired be black, according to published accounts. That case led the department to put in the “legwork” to find non-discriminatory exams for promotions and hiring, according to said Lt. Ray Sneed, president of the D.C. Firefighters Association. Sneed said racial tensions still exist in the department over disciplinary issues but not over hiring and promotions. “We have a promotional process that yields what your looking for — a fair cross-section that’s representative of this department,” Sneed said.
