Boston Police’s Racial Hiring Is Terminated

A federal judge has ordered the Police Department to end its affirmative action hiring plan 30 years after it was put in place, ruling that minority hiring goals have been met.

U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris granted a request this week from eight white men that she strike down the department’s policy of hiring one minority candidate for every white candidate hired. The eight were denied jobs last year as police officers.

The ruling ends three decades of affirmative action hiring at the department, following a 1974 consent decree requiring that the percentage of black and Latino officers reflect their percentage in the city’s population. In the 2000 census, minorities accounted for 50.5% of the city’s population.

The Fire Department had been under the same consent decree, but its policy was thrown out in March 2003.

Saris said the Police Department met its goal of racial parity more than a year ago.

To have used the racial hiring quota in October 2003, when plaintiff Paul DeLeo Jr. and seven other men were passed over for jobs, was ruled unconstitutional.

Saris gave the two sides 15 days to decide how to provide relief to the eight men, all of whom still hoped to be hired.