Court rules against white firefighter's claim promotion denied because city caved into Vulcan pressure. Judge says Mount Vernon, NY case a 'far cry' from Ricci.

By Timothy O’Connor, LoHud.com:

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a white Mount Vernon firefighter who said he was passed over for promotion because of his race.

Calling it a “far cry” from a case where the City of New Haven, Conn., was found by the Supreme Court to have engaged in reverse discrimination, U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel rejected the lawsuit filed by Joseph Carroll.

Carroll, 50, sued the city in December 2007, five months after his upgrade to lieutenant was stopped when the Vulcan Society of Westchester, a black firefighters’ group, opposed his promotion as violating a federal decree aimed at increasing the number of African-Americans in the department.

In his lawsuit, Carroll claimed he was denied his promotion by the city because the city caved into pressure from the black organization.

His lawsuit appeared to get a lift last year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a predominantly white group of New Haven, Conn., firefighters whose promotions were rejected after the city threw out the results of a 2003 Civil Service test.

The court ruled 5-4 in Ricci v. DeStefano that New Haven officials wrongly tossed the test after black firefighters did not score well enough for promotion, and the city feared a potential lawsuit.

But Seibel said in her 17-page ruling Friday that unlike New Haven officials, the City of Mount Vernon did not take any steps designed to deny a promotion to Carroll, who was a 19-year veteran of the department.

Mount Vernon officials waited for the city Law Department to evaluate the Vulcan Society’s complaint regarding the consent decree. The Vulcans’ protest came four days before the 2004 test list for promotion expired.

The Law Department did not respond before the list expired, necessitating the use of a 2007 list where Carroll placed lower. The first two firefighters promoted to lieutenant from the new list were white.

“There is no evidence that the delay occasioned by consideration of the Vulcan Society’s objections was a pretext for discrimination,” Seibel wrote, adding that there was no evidence the Law Department deliberately dragged its feet as the old list approached its expiration.