The Seattle City Council is facing something of a dilemma in its popular pledge to cut the police budget by 50 percent. To do so would require firing a significant number of police officers, which is also popular. The problem is that the firing would be done by seniority and many of the less senior officers are black. The solution according to City Council member Lisa Herbold is simple: fire officers based on their race. While that would be the definition of racial discrimination, Herbold clearly believes that it is discrimination for a good cause. The federal courts are likely to disagree. Most notably, Herbold’s call for racial discrimination against white officers would seek to undue the work of Justice Thurgood Marshall who insisted that racial discrimination unlawful and evil regardless of the race you want to disenfranchise or discriminate against.
Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best released a video calling the plan of Herbold and others “completely reckless.” She also sent a letter to Mayor Jenny Durkan warning that dramatic cuts would require the layoff of hundreds of officers. The Police Department also warned that the firings would include many minority officers.
It was only the last risk that concerned Herbold who promptly suggested discriminating on the basis of race:
Herbold insists that this would be perfectly legal despite the prohibitions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
What concerns me most is not that such calls for racial discrimination are possibly constitutional but that they are so clearly popular.
The EEOC amplifies this point on its website: “It is unlawful to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race or color in regard to hiring, termination, promotion, compensation, job training, or any other term, condition, or privilege of employment.”
In taking this position, Herbold is opposing one of the best known opinions by Thurgood Marshall. In McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co. (1976), Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote opinions that called for the broad interpretation of Title VII to protect everyone. In McDonald, two white employees were fired after a theft in the business. The two white employees were held jointly and severally liable with a black employee. However, only the white employees were fired. After they sued under Title VII, Marshall wrote for the majority in denouncing such discrimination against white employees, insisted that “racial discrimination in private employment against whites [must be] on the same terms as racial discrimination against nonwhites.” He denounced “the illogic in retaining guilty employees of one color while discharging those of another color.” While Marshall would vigorously support affirmative action (including his dissent in Bakke), he believed that all races were protected from discrimination under federal law.
This of course would be even more egregious since Herbold wants to fire white officers due to their race alone. They would not be accused of any wrongdoing or failure. The problem is their race.
It is notable that is not an action that is part of or in furtherance of a valid affirmative action plans ordered by a court or approved by a federal agency. See United Steelworkers of America v. Weber (1979) and Johnson v. Transportation Agency (1987). In Ricci v. DeStefano (2009), the Supreme Court ruled against the city of New Haven after a group of white firefighters and a hispanic firefighter challenged the refusal to certify the results of promotion exams in order to promote black firefighters who performed less well. The Court held that the City’s refusal to certify the test was unlawful discrimination under Title VII. If found that “race-based action like the City’s in this case is impermissible under Title VII unless the employer can demonstrate a strong basis in evidence that, had it not taken the action, it would have been liable under the disparate-impact statute.”
Herbold would not only refuse to promote on the basis of race but would fire officers on that basis. No test. Just a pure racially discriminatory program of terminations. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), Chief Justice John Roberts once declared “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” That is clearly not the plan of Herbold and any of her colleagues who want to fire officers based on their race.
I also worry about the lack of common sense within the Seattle City Council. They exhibit a delusional authority and people in Seattle need to wake up! Lisa’s self satisfying know-it-all smirk in her picture says it all.
Why not? Corporate America has been laying off employees for being white men and given preferential hiring to women and minorities for the past twenty years.
How about Seattle City Council unseat all white City Council members?
Brilliant. The City called a meeting in mid June, only for white City employees. It was training on how to not be so white. Google it. Unbelievable.
Did they show up in black face?
I hear that introductory classes in jive were involved.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CXeHk9W-iw
How did Seattle get so many lunatics in city government?
There should be a study.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
The affluence, security, agreeableness of the last 30 years have left some people completely disoriented. For others, their self-concept would be badly injured by acknowledging reality. They’ve spent so much of their life looking down on others, they cannot acknowledge that they need the people they despise.
“they cannot acknowledge that they need the people they despise.”
***
Keep this up and they will find out.
Somebody in the local political machines must know these kooks in person. Why, and for what purpose, are these kooks getting machine support? Why, as Turley asks, is there any public support for these outrageous ideas? Why no outrage?
We’re seeing a massive, nation-wide political experiment where street violence is being used as a political took to fund-raise and extract political concessions without a vote. There is widespread disgust with street violence in Seattle. It can be viewed in the 2019 local TV documentary “Seattle is Dying”
The disgust isn’t wide spread enough to vote these lunatics out.
I think it’s the water.
public schools.
No study needed. They were elected. The people of Seattle got what they deserved.
What a smug RUBE!!!!!
Racism has made a real comeback in this country. It’s not Institutional or systemic racism that is driving Lisa Herbold. It is her willingness to see police officers suffer racial discrimination. She’s found an entire new way to be unethical and immoral – erect an entirely new structure of systemic racism for pragmatic reasons.
I suggest that Seattle put Lisa Herbold’s new idea to a vote of the people. If the people of Seattle want to inflict revolutionary justice on each other and themselves, they deserve all the obloquy which goes with that. They deserve to try to discriminate against police officers by race, and be shot down in the courts over and over. Already, according to a local TV documentary “Seattle is Dying”, Seattle’s police officers are already resigning over lack of support from a city council with moral and educational failures like Lisa Herbold on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw
See I know a lot of you good Americans who still believe in Enlightenment ideals of individual liberties find it shocking, but, I can explain.
The “individual rights” are a slogan applied by a minority political coalition, BECAUSE THEY ARE A MINORITY
they want to DIVIDE THE MAJORITY
if they succeed, then, they OUTNUMBER THE NEWLY ATOMIZED MAJORITY
they use their group cohesion then to gain power
when THEY HIT MAJORITY STATUS, then, guess what?
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ARE OUT THE DOOR! THEY THROW THEM IN THE GARBAGE
because then they don’t want any such restrictions on their own power
then they are coming to crush the leftovers of the majority, lock them down and lock them up, further atomize them, disempower then, and take their stuff!
That’s what’s happened to white people in america, and that’s the plan for how to finish us off.
Oh, so cynical, so racist you are taught to believe. But: SO ACCURATE!
the thing we can do now is get smart fast. your life may depend on it. at every juncture. we can turn on a dime; it is happening. just watch. we will survive
PS. really, it is a little more complicated than what i said, since, the minority rising to power that I described, is a multiracial coalition called “Democrats”
and the people they seek to oppress, includes a multiracial group of americans, including their own naive voters, and generally law abiding people of many colors
but they are aimed at breaking the LEGACY MAJORITY GROUP: WHITES
because this is the strongest pocket of resistance to globalism in America, which is the strongest country in the world, so if they break the resistance here, it can fall everywhere
we are in a contest of globalism versus nationalism at the end of the day. and the beginning of tomorrow. it is not necessary for white people to become racist, but, we do need to learn to become positive about socially and politically organizing our own group for our own legitimate interests. This is what “democracy” was supposed to allow for everyone, including us! but out of naievete, we have denied it to ourselves even as we allowed it to all others. This was pure stupidity, self abnegation, insanity!
And we better use what little of it remains before light’s out!
Right out there in bold, capital letters: THE CONSTITUTION BE DAMNED. When it comes to using unjust discrimination in an alegeded attempt to fight discrimination, it is clear the impediment is the Constitution itself.
This needs to be ended now… these people should be removed for being what they are…racists..
Or if you’re not in denial..Marxist..
It is just amazing that the voters elect such morons to such positions of authority. It says a lot about the intelligence of the voters of Seattle. Morons all.
The Courts are LIKELY to agree? That’s like saying that the Sun is likely to rise tomorrow morning.
So pay the white cops their salary…or pay them a legal settlement that will probably be exponentially more. I suppose, on top of constitutional law, some math classes may have been missed.
They should lead by example… ALL white city council members should resign immediately!
It is also against Washington’s I-200 law.
Anti-racists don’t mind being…..well, racist.
I’m wondering what is it going to take for white America to wake up and take action, any action. I’m tired of the Floyd thing. He was a convicted felon who knew he’d be back in lock up again if he broke the law. After doing a stint he was back on the streets passing bad bills. He resisted arrest, one cop went too far, not four, that cop is in jail (in record time) and will never get a far trial in the future.
Now blacks are ravaging our society, attacking law enforcement, attacking All white Americans, destroying history, looting business, burning cities, blacks without care stop their vehicles and open fire like it’s Dodge City.
White American cannot continue to appease or negotiate with ignorance and the mob. They must at some point get tough and bring law and order to all of the nation including blacks.
What could possibly go wrong?
fire all the white officers, just get ready to write those million dollar lawsuit checks.
I’ sure this brilliant move by city council will end well. What could possibly go wrong?
Why are Seattle politicians promoting hate crimes and vandalism?
Because they are ideologically possessed.
A large over reach since Washington state only has 3.7 blacks.
Have you met the 0.7 person!?!! LOL
Is this some kind of time-sharing thing with Oregon?
I only ask because one of the Dakota states has, for years, vainly tried to recruit more blacks into its National Guard. Apparently all the blacks of military age are in the active component of the US Air Force at bases like Minot AFB. I hear the food’s better.
loupgarous – the food might be good, but it is cold as hell in the winter up there in Minot. I think they may be above the Arctic Circle/ 😉
They’re just below the Laurentian Shield, which accounts for some of the weather, and it’s possible some Lake Effect storms sweep through there.
Of COURSE it is wrong (and illegal) to discriminate on the basis of race when it comes to hiring, firing, discipline, etc. The law makes it clear, and we as Americans broadly accept this because of our belief that all races are to be treated equally. And that belief stems, in turn, from the Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal.” However, to paraphrase Orwell — they made me read him in Tenth Grade and now I finally get to use him — “some races are more equal than others.”