Three of the Supreme Court justices who voted against New Haven in Monday’s landmark firefighters case ruling zeroed in on one character they saw playing a nefarious role: the Rev. Boise Kimber.
In fact, Kimber’s role as a New Haven politico and FOJ (Friend of John, Mayor DeStefano) ended up sparking a lively debate between the Supreme Court’s conservative and liberal wings.
This is the latest in a two-decade-long saga of how Kimber (pictured) has caused political headaches for DeStefano while receiving repeated political plums from the mayor, including a controversial “consulting” housing contract that figured prominently in a 1998 City Hall corruption scandal.
DeStefano in turn has relied on the Newhallville preacher to carry his banner in the black community in pivotal Democratic mayoral primaries dating back to his 1989 contest against John Daniels and his 2001 race against Martin Looney.
At issue in Monday’s Supreme Court decision was whether Kimber is Exhibit A for how crude racial politics trumped merit and fairness in the case of the “New Haven 20.”
Kimber clearly made an impression on the court.
Justices Samuel Alito singled out Kimber in a concurring opinion to Ricci v. DeStefano, the case in which a 5 – 4 majority ruled that New Haven can’t ignore the results of a fire department promotional exam just because no African-Americans scored high enough. (Read about that here.)
From the start, the New Haven 20 — the one Hispanic and 19 white firefighters who sued to have the exams’ results honored — argued that New Haven’s DeStefano administration scuttled the test because of political pressure. And they specifically mentioned Kimber in their lawsuit. Rev. Kimber, a prominent vote-puller for Mayor DeStefano in past elections, sits on the Board of Fire Commissioners. He played a vocal role at the Civil Service Commission in arguing to have the test results ignored.
Alito, in an opinion also signed by Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, noted that “even the District Court” (the lower court that ruled on behalf of the city in this case) “admitted that ‘a jury could rationally infer that city officials worked behind the scenes to sabotage the promotional examinations because they knew that, were the exams certified, the Mayor would incur the wrath of [Rev. Boise] Kimber and other influential leaders of New Haven’s African-American community.”
The opinion proceeds to present a three-paragraph attack bio of the good reverend, going back decades over terrain familiar to Kimber’s New Haven critics.
“Reverend Boise Kimber, to whom the District Court referred, is a politically powerful New Haven pastor and a self-professed ‘‘kingmaker.’ … On one occasion, in front of TV cameras, he threatened a race riot during the murder trial of the black man arrested for killing white Yalie Christian Prince. He continues to call whites racist if they question his actions.’
“Reverend Kimber’s personal ties with seven-term New Haven Mayor John DeStefano (Mayor) stretch back more than a decade. In 1996, for example, Mayor DeStefano testified for Rev. Kimber as a character witness when Rev. Kimber — then the manager of a funeral home — was prosecuted and convicted for stealing prepaid funeral expenses from an elderly woman and then lying about the matter under oath … ‘Reverend Kimber has played a leadership role in all of Mayor DeStefano’s political campaigns, [and] is considered a valuable political supporter and vote-getter.’ According to the Mayor’s former campaign manager (who is currently his executive assistant), Rev. Kimber is an invaluable political asset because “[h]e’s very good at organizing people and putting together field operations, as a result of his ties to labor, his prominence in the religious community and his long-standing commitment to roots.’ [Kimber was subsequently pardoned in the funeral home case.]
“In 2002, the Mayor picked Rev. Kimber to serve as the Chairman of the New Haven Board of Fire Commissioners (BFC), ‘despite the fact that he had no experience in the profession, fire administration, [or] municipal management … In that capacity, Rev. Kimber told firefighters that certain new recruits would not be hired because “‘they just have too many vowels in their name[s].’ … After protests about this comment, Rev. Kimber stepped down as chairman of the BFC … but he remained on the BFC and retained ‘a direct line to the mayor.’”
Kimber did not return calls for comment Monday afternoon.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who sided with the city in the case, takes on Alito’s Kimber-bashing in a dissenting opinion. She argues that Alito “exaggerates” Kimber’s influence and his role in “engineering” the outcome.
She notes how Alito “recounts at length the alleged machinations of Rev. Boise Kimber (a local political activist), Mayor John DeStefano, and certain members of the mayor’s staff.”
She then points out that neither Kimber nor the mayor’s staff made the call to disregard the exam results. The mayorally appointed Civil Service Board, “an unelected, politically insulated body,” in Ginsburg’s telling, made that decision.
She calls it “striking that Justice Alito’s concurrence says hardly a word about the CSB itself, perhaps because there is scant evidence that its motivation was anything other than to comply with Title VII’s disparate impact provision.”
And, she points out, the firefighters union — another politically influential group — was just as vocal on the opposite side as Kimber.
“The real issue, then, is not whether the mayor and his staff were politically motivated; it is whether their attempt to score political points was legitimate (i.e., non-discriminatory),” Ginsburg writes. “Were they seeking to exclude white firefighters from promotion (unlikely, as a fair test would undoubtedly result in the addition of white firefighters to the officer ranks), or did they realize, at least belatedly, that their tests could be toppled in a disparate-impact suit?”
Yale law professor Drew Days (pictured) said Monday that Ginsburg “got it right.”
Alito et al. made Kimber “the main culprit in the story,” said Days, who argued cases before the Supreme Court as President Bill Clinton’s solicitor general.
But that’s jumping to a unproved conclusion, Days said: “Whatever people in New Haven might think about all this, the political process is rough and tumble. If people don’t like what the city does or is about to do, they make a lot of noise. Is the city trying to make sure its constituents are being heard? Or are they pandering and doing something that is illegal to get political support?”
Past stories on fire department promotions and the Ricci case:
• Supreme Court Overturns City On Ricci
• On Page 25, A Hint
• Minority Firefighters Vow Post-Ricci Unity
• Ricci Ruling Won’t End Quest
• Ricci, Sotomayor Brand DeStefano
• Firefighter Case Reveals Surprise Obama Stand
• Justices Zero In On Race-Based Distinctions
• Rights Groups Back Black Firefighters
• The Supreme Stakes: Title VII’s Future
• Dobbs v. Bolden
• Latino Group Backs White Firefighters
• Black Firefighters: Ricci Case Poses Grave Threat
• NAACP Backs City In Firefighter Case
• Paging Justice Kennedy
• Fire Inspectors Promoted
• Fire Inspector List Approved
• U.S. Supreme Court To Hear Firefighters’ Case
• Fire Promotions Examined in Supreme Court