Judge temporarily halts black preference in state hiring

Received by Newsfinder from APMay 26, 2005 16:53 Eastern Time MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) _ A federal judge has suspended a race-based hiring and promotion rule that state agencies have been required to follow for 35 years. The late U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson ruled in a job discrimination suit in 1970 that the state could not hire or promote a white person from a list of certified applicants if a higher-ranking black was on the list and available for work. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who now handles the long-running case, ruled May 20 that the no-bypass rule is no longer appropriate because of changed circumstances in state hiring and promotions. When the case began, blacks comprised one-fourth of Alabama’s population and were underrepresented in state government. According to the state Personnel Department, the state work force was 15.6 percent black in 1976, but it was 39.5 percent black in 2004. “The continued implementation of race-conscious, indeterminate, across-the-board no-bypass rule without any recent court review and reauthorization during its extended existence is, on its face, unconstitutional,” Thompson wrote. Thompson said he will accept written evidence and arguments in the case until Sept. 19 before deciding whether to strike down the rule permanently. The U.S. Justice Department, which brought the original hiring discrimination suit against the state, has changed sides and joined the state in asking Thompson to end the race-based hiring and promotion rule. Thompson’s ruling stemmed from a complaint filed by Timothy D. Pope, a state prison system employee at Draper Correctional Facility in Elmore County. He applied for and won a promotion to the Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, but the job offer was withdrawn because of the no-bypass rule. “This is a significant day in that a federal court has recognized that the rule that was entered in 1970 is no longer needed or appropriate under current constitutional law,” said Raymond Fitzpatrick, attorney for Pope. “We should not have any race-based quotas in the state employment system. We have sought to ensure that the state has fair, open and nondiscriminatory hiring and promotional practices,” he told The Birmingham News. Rusty Adams, an attorney for black state employees, said the rule “has played an important role in any progress that has been made at the state in the hiring of African-Americans,” and he will ask Thompson to put the rule back in place. State Personnel Director Tommy Flowers said that before Johnson imposed the no-bypass rule in 1970, state agency officials could hire or promote anyone out of the top 10 applicants. Flowers’s department ranks applicants for state merit-system jobs by giving tests and evaluating detailed forms filled out by applicants. Flowers said Thursday he has sent letters to state agencies informing them that the no-bypass rule no longer applies but that other portions of the 1970 ruling are still in effect. Those portions include conducting intensive recruiting programs to get blacks to work for the state and notifying black applicants when they are on a list of 10 job hunters being considered by a state agency. Flowers said he is hopeful the court will soon end the entire 1970 order.