Legal Problems Continue to Plague S.F. Fire Department Equality Issue

A 19-year legal battle over hiring and promotion practices in the city’s white, male-dominated Fire Department is headed for federal appeals court after a judge’s approval of a disputed city plan.

The seven-year agreement to meet specific goals for hiring and promoting women and minorities also faces other legal and fiscal problems despite Friday’s approval by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel.

Among other things, the plan sets long-term goals of 10% women and 40% minority staff representation in the Fire Department, and goals of 55% minority hiring and 10% female hiring through 1994. The department now has about 225 minority members on its staff of 1,100, and hired its first seven women last August.

The appeals court is expected to decide early this week whether to block the agreement during the appeal, which could take a year or more.

The agreement between the city and civil rights groups follows 19 years of lawsuits, court orders and turbulence, including the discovery of a swastika this January in the office of two minority fire inspectors.

It was Patel’s outrage and declaration of the department as “out of control” during a January investigation of incidents of racial harassment inside the department that led to the firing the next day of Fire Chief Ed Phipps.

Firefighters Union Local 798 asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to block the plan from taking effect while the union appeals Patel’s order. The union has been joined by the Reagan Administration, which sued the department in 1984 for discrimination against minorities but contends that the court-approved plan is unfair to whites.

Deputy City Atty. Dan Siegal stopped just short of calling the federal government obstructionist. “They are advancing the Ronald Reagan policy of limiting the efforts by municipalities to engage in affirmative action by promoting arguments that have been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The Justice Department has backed the Reagan position that specific acts of discrimination against individuals should be remedied without using broad affirmative-action programs.

Meanwhile, the city, which has promised to hire 500 firefighters during the 7-year life of the agreement, faces possible layoffs because of a projected $179-million budget shortage and the refusal of city voters last week to allow a tax increase.

Mayor Art Agnos has discussed layoffs that would include 61 firefighters. Fire Chief Fred Postel said that under seniority rules, all seven women and about two dozen minority members would be idled.

“If there are layoffs there might be problems” in implementing the agreement, Siegal said Friday. “The city is going to do its best to avoid layoffs.”