Michael Barone on the backroom political machinations which resulted in Ricci vs. New Haven

and on Sotomayor's and Ginsburg's feckless support of the dirty, dirty politics behind the New Haven's denial of Frank Ricci's rights. It's not long. Just read it all. Trust me on this.

Such is [reverse discrimination] governance these days in a liberal university town. It may remind some of us old enough to remember of the machinations and contrivances of Southern white officials and agitators employed to prevent blacks from registering and voting.

This is the sort of thing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described in the text as just the workings of politics. Writing in Slate, Yale Law faculty member Emily Bazelon goes further. She laments that the promotion test rewarded memorization and that it favored "'fire buffs' -- guys who read fire suppression manuals on their down time."
[...]
Bazelon and Sotomayor, who voted to uphold the city's decertification of the promotion test, are typical of liberal elites who are ready to ratify squalid political deals -- and blatant racial discrimination -- in return for the political support and the votes that can be rallied by the likes of [local political activist] Kimber. You supply the numbers on Election Day, and we'll supply the verbiage to put a pretty label on your shenanigans.

Usually the people who are hurt by this are not as sympathetic as Frank Ricci, the dyslexic firefighter who paid a friend $1,000 to read the training manuals and studied hard enough to get the highest score on the test.