Quinn v. City of Boston
| Decision Date | 27 March 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-1727.,02-1727. |
| Citation | 325 F.3d 18 |
| Parties | Joseph E. QUINN, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. CITY OF BOSTON, et al., Defendants, Appellees, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Intervenor, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Harold L. Lichten, with whom Pyle, Rome, Lichten & Ehrenberg, P.C. was on brief, for appellants.
Christine M. Roach, with whom Roach & Carpenter, P.C. and Merita A. Hopkins, Corporation Counsel, were on brief, for defendants-appellees.
Toni G. Wolfman, with whom Foley Hoag LLP, Nadine M. Cohen, Maricia Woodham, and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law were on brief, for intervenor-appellee.
Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, STAHL, Senior Circuit Judge, and LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.
For over a quarter of a century, the hiring of firefighters in the City of Boston (the City) has taken place in the albedo of a federal court consent decree designed to remedy the effects of past discrimination against African-Americans and Hispanics. On April 11, 2001, five candidates for employment (the Candidates) brought suit in the federal district court alleging that the City had discriminated against them on the basis of race when hiring new firefighters in the fall of 2000. The City defended its hiring practices as compliant with, and compelled by, the terms of the consent decree. The district court granted summary judgment in the defendants' favor. See Quinn v. City of Boston, 204 F.Supp.2d 156 (D.Mass.2002). The Candidates appeal. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the judgment and remand to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
In considering an appeal from a grant of summary judgment, this court, like the trial court, normally will "view the entire record in the light most hospitable to the party opposing summary judgment, indulging all reasonable inferences in that party's favor." Griggs-Ryan v. Smith, 904 F.2d 112, 115 (1st Cir.1990). Here, however, the facts upon which our decision turns are undisputed.
In the early 1970s, two suits were brought against a number of municipalities subject to the Massachusetts Civil Service law (). The suits alleged that the municipalities engaged in discriminatory recruitment and hiring practices whilst staffing their respective fire departments. These actions culminated in the entry of an omnibus consent decree that influenced the manner in which the affected municipalities could recruit and hire firefighters. Boston Chapter, NAACP, Inc. v. Beecher, 371 F.Supp. 507, 520-23 (D.Mass.1974) (Beecher I). The decree was affirmed on appeal. Boston Chapter, NAACP, Inc. v. Beecher, 504 F.2d 1017, 1028 (1st Cir.1974) (Beecher II), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 910, 95 S.Ct. 1561, 43 L.Ed.2d 775 (1975). It has been in effect for nearly thirty years.
The Beecher decree — courts consistently have used that phrase to include the original decree and subsequent orders entered to fine-tune it, see, e.g., Mackin v. City of Boston, 969 F.2d 1273, 1274 (1st Cir.1992), and we emulate that example — circumscribed the hiring of firefighters in much of Massachusetts over the ensuing years. Its history up to 1992 is well chronicled in the case law. See, e.g., id. at 1274-75. We urge readers who thirst for a more complete understanding of the genesis and operation of the decree to consult that opinion. For present purposes, we are content to note that the Beecher decree was intended to rectify a situation in which many fire departments within Massachusetts had remained lily-white, or nearly so, despite dramatic increases in the African-American and Hispanic populations. The decree sought to accomplish its goal by affirmative action, i.e., by fostering a hiring regime that accorded race-based preferences to blacks and Spanish-surnamed individuals.1 Id. at 1274 n. 2. Each of the affected fire departments was to remain subject to the strictures of the decree (and, thus, to accord race-based preferences) until such time as that department met a general benchmark established by the decree: the attainment of parity (or, at least, rough parity). See Beecher I, 371 F.Supp. at 523 (). The meaning of this criterion, and the manner in which it is to be gauged, are questions that have permeated this litigation from the outset. Not surprisingly, those questions are central to the case at hand.
Unlike some forty-five other fire departments that heretofore have met the goals of the decree and gained release from its constraints, the Boston Fire Department (BFD) has operated under the auspices of the Beecher decree since 1974. A decade ago, a group of non-minority men, aspiring to appointments as firefighters within the BFD, endeavored to bring the City out from under the umbrella of the decree. See Mackin, 969 F.2d at 1275. Although we affirmed the district court's rejection of that attempt, we noted that the decree was not meant to operate in perpetuity. To the contrary, it would remain in force as to any particular municipality only until its stated goal had been achieved. Id. at 1278. A decade has passed, but — despite increased diversity within the BFD — the City still hires firefighters in accordance with the Beecher decree.
That brings us to the events giving rise to the instant case. In 1998, the Candidates — Joseph Quinn, Sean O'Brien, Robert Dillon, Joseph Sullivan, and Roger Kendrick, Jr. — aspired to firefighter appointments in the BFD. All five are white males; as was required, they identified themselves as non-minority applicants. Each took the firefighter entrance examination administered by the Massachusetts Division of Personnel Administration (MDPA) and scored ninety-nine out of a possible one hundred points.
The Candidates' scores satisfied the threshold criterion for employment. Along with all other qualifying applicants, they were placed on a civil service eligibility list in rank order. This ranking made allowance for various statutory preferences (e.g., veterans, residents, children of firefighters killed or disabled in the line of duty), ceding pride of place to the holders of such preferences in accordance with state law (even if those persons had earned lower test scores than other qualified candidates). See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 31, §§ 26, 40. None of these statutory preferences involve race or ethnicity, and none of them are challenged in this proceeding.
Preparing to hire fifty new firefighters, the BFD requested a certified list of eligible applicants from the Massachusetts Human Resources Division (HRD). The HRD selected individuals in rank order (based on statutory preferences and test scores) and grouped them into a putative "hiring class." After screening out those individuals who stumbled over a variety of race-neutral preconditions (such as drug tests and physical examinations), the HRD composed a slate of "hiring pairs" by placing the highest ranking minority member and the highest ranking non-minority member into a group of two and then repeating the process until the hiring class had been exhausted.
In November 2000, the BFD, following this rank order, chose twenty-five pairs from the eligibility list and appointed those fifty individuals as entry-level firefighters.2 The Candidates were not among those selected. Although each received a letter from the BFD stating that the vacancies had been filled by persons who outranked him on the certification list, the record suggests that, had the BFD followed a strict rank-order selection process (without any consideration of race or ethnicity), the Candidates (or some of them) likely would have been in the top fifty.
The Candidates (other than Kendrick, who joined the litigation at a later date) then sued the City. They argued that the City impermissibly had used preferences based on race and ethnicity to rank minorities ahead of them on the eligibility list. In the Candidates' view, this constituted discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (count 1), Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151B, § 4 (count 2), and 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (count 3). The Candidates also attacked another aspect of the hiring process; they argued that requiring them to submit to medical examinations without a conditional offer of employment violated both federal and state law (counts 4-6).3 The district court granted the motion of the Boston Chapter of the NAACP to intervene as a party defendant. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 24.
The Candidates moved for summary judgment on the first three counts of their complaint or, in the alternative, for a preliminary injunction forbidding the City from filling at least five firefighter positions pending a resolution of the action. They maintained, among other things, that the City should not have applied the Beecher decree to the November 2000 hiring cycle because, by that time, the City had achieved parity in the firefighter force (and, therefore, had met the benchmark for release from the strictures of the decree). The defendants did not controvert the material facts, but, rather, opposed this motion as a matter of law and cross-moved for summary judgment. The district court denied the Candidates' motion and granted summary judgment for the defendants on counts 1 through 3. This appeal followed. Counts 4 through 6 remain pending before the district court.
It is too familiar a proposition to require citation of authority that a federal court may not act beyond the scope of its jurisdiction. As a logical corollary, parties cannot confer subject matter...
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