09-2676 Finch v. Peterson

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Employment
Race discrimination

Where a consent decree provided that a police department was not to make promotions based solely on race, the department is not entitled to qualified immunity when it considered race in making promotions to captain.

“If the Police Department were permitted to adjust the results of any promotional test, ex post, in order to advantage African-American officers, Subsection IX(D) would be of little use because the results of any offending test could simply be manipulated after the fact in order to produce the desired outcome. Properly understood, Subsection IX, read as a whole, operates to prohibit so-called ‘race-norming’ in promotions. Accordingly, we agree with the magistrate judge that the consent decree did not require the use of race as a factor in making promotion decisions. The individual defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity from suit.”

Affirmed.

09-2676 Finch v. Peterson

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Lynch, Mag. J., Sykes, J.

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