For eight years, Michael Walker has been the only black captain on the New Haven Fire Department.

“Once I retire, there’ll be no black captains or battalion chiefs,” he says. Walker’s been with the department for 26 years—enough time to retire any day now. “That’s why it’s important to have diversity in the department in all the ranks,” he says.

Walker was joined with about 100 other community members and black firefighters from across the Northeast on Wednesday afternoon to support black New Haven firefighters in a racism case scheduled to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in April.

The group was announcing that the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters (ABPFF) have filed a friend of the court brief supporting the city’s decision to throw out a promotions exam that was deemed racist.

During the promotion exam in 2003, twice as many white firefighters passed the test as blacks. The city threw out the test results in fear of a potential lawsuit from black firefighters. Instead, the 19 white firefighters and one Latino, who passed the test and were denied promotions filed suit.

The city wanted to promote racial diversity within the fire department to follow Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (which prohibits discrimination by employers). Instead, only whites scored high enough to be promoted. The “New Haven 20” as the 19 whites and one Latino are known, argue that they studied for and passed the test and should be promoted accordingly. By not promoting them, they say, the city is practicing reverse discrimination.

The case deals with important questions, like: Can a city throw out a test that results in unintended racially disproportionate results? Can a city use different cut-off scores for different races? Is it more important for the city to comply with merit-based testing results or to comply with Title VII?

The case has been appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, and the decision could have wide-ranging ramifications.

“Precedent will be set,” says Asa Grimes, a battalion chief from Philadelphia who drove up to New Haven for the press conference with several other black firefighters from Philadelphia. Grimes worries that if the Supremes side with the white firefighters in this case it could hurt his chances against a lawsuit he’s planning to file in Philadelphia about hiring practices in that fire department.

“This could have a ripple effect nation-wide,” he says, “so we’re here to show our support.”

Like the ABPFF, more than a dozen other organizations have filed briefs with the court either in support of City Hall’s position to throw out the test scores or with the white firefighters who believe they should have been promoted.

In their brief to the court, the New Haven 20 point out that City Hall hired an outside firm, IOS, to write the test.

“Aware that New Haven, like other cities, routinely experiences racial disparities in outcomes of qualifying exams, IOS went to great lengths in collaboration with city officials to mitigate that impact to the greatest extent possible without compromising the integrity of the exams. It engaged in a painstaking process of job analyses, employing questionnaires, interviews, and ride-along exercises with incumbents

to identify the importance and frequency of essential job tasks. There was a deliberate overrepresentation of minority incumbents in this process,” writes Karen Lee Torre, the New Haven 20’s attorney.

Dennis Thompson, the attorney representing ABPFF, has fought several discrimination cases for fire fighters, many of which revolve around promotion exams, he says.

“These tests are just rote memorization,” Thompson argues. “They don’t separate those who know something from those who don’t. This has nothing to do with what kind of officer you will be.”