The justices on the U.S. Supreme Court were not the only ones who weighed the merits of Ricci v. DeStefano today. So did the editorial boards of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
And just as the justices appeared divided on the firefighters’ discrimination claims, the newspapers diverged, too, taking opposite positions.
The Times urged the court to side with the city, saying, “Because New Haven had a reasonable belief that the test discriminated against minority applicants, it had a legitimate basis for discarding the results.”
The Journal, on the other hand, took the firefighters’ side, noting that while diversity is a noble goal “there’s got to be a better way to accomplish this goal than by denying promotions to workers who earned them under a well understood process open to all candidates.”