The Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 to overturn the Second Circuit’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano. The Court’s ruling severely limits the ability of governments and private corporations to create a diverse workforce.

People For the American Way Executive Vice President Marge Baker issued the following statement:

“Anyone looking for more evidence of how conservative the Supreme Court has become will be well served by today’s decision. The Court today seriously undermined Title VII’s protections against acts that may appear harmless on their face but that, in fact, have a discriminatory effect.

“Title VII dramatically improved the diversity of police and fire departments that previously had few, if any, minorities or women. Under the restrictions put in place today, it will be much more difficult for these departments to continue to build a diverse workforce.

“The Court today set a new standard for how states and cities across the country can operate — and in the process exposed conservative cries for ‘judicial restraint’ as utterly hypocritical. It seems conservative legal activists are perfectly happy to have judges rewrite the law as long as they get the result they want. In Ricci, the far right wing of the Court defied Congress’s well thought out design for encouraging diversity and preventing discrimination in favor of its own preferred policy. If the ruling has any upside, it’s that we’ll no longer have to listen to the Right’s cries of ‘judicial activism’ with a straight face.”

# # #