Black firefighter claims discrimination after failing to get promotion he previously turned down. Berea, Ohio's William Phelps says original offer was race & not merit based.
Read lawsuit
This is truly a fascinating and different story out of Berea, Ohio. It is a bit complicated and required two readings of James McCarty's article for The Plain Dealer before I understood it. Let me try to explain it chronologically.
In 2010, Williams Phelps, a 17-year veteran of the Berea Fire Department who is black, was offered and turned down a promotion to lieutenant. The reason Phelps gave in a lawsuit recently filed in federal court, is that the promotion, at the time, was based on race and not merit. In that suit, William Phelps refers to the interview for the job he had with Safety Director Kenneth Adams, who is also black. From The Plain Dealer:
"If I promote you first, you need to be able to deal with the situation of being promoted ahead of two candidates who scored higher than you," Phelps quoted Adams as saying. He went on to quote Adams as saying that if he didn't promote Phelps, "people in the community" would ask why he didn't give the job to the black candidate.
Adams rejected Phelps' version of the process, and denied making the statements quoted in Phelps' lawsuit.
This year there have been two more firefighters promoted to lieutenant. Though Phelps says his exam scores placed him in one of the top two in line for those jobs, he was not offered a promotion. Phelps contends now that the promotion is based solely on merit and not the color of his skin, he wasn't offered the job. He believes he was passed over as retaliation for what happened last year.
In addition, Firefighter/Paramedic Phelps, has been one of the faces of the Vote No on Issue 2 campaign in Ohio. Issue 2, which will be decided on Tuesday, is a referendum on Senate Bill 5, backed by Gov. John Kasich, limiting collective bargaining rights for public employees. Phelps lent his face to the ad below that has been seen on billboards around the state.
