Dahlia Lithwick at Slate seems among the first to pile onto Ricci, doing some local newspaper investigation.
According to local newspapers, Ricci filed his first lawsuit against the city of New Haven in 1995, at the ripe old age of 20, for failing to hire him as a firefighter. That January, the Hartford Chronicle reported that Ricci sued, saying “he was not hired because he is dyslexic.” The complaint in that suit, filed in federal court, alleged that the city’s failure to hire Ricci because of his dyslexia violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Frank Ricci was one of 795 candidates interviewed for 40 jobs. According to his complaint, the reason he was not hired was that he disclosed his dyslexia in an interview. That case was settled in 1997 with a confidential settlement in which Ricci withdrew his lawsuit in exchange for a job with the fire department and $11,143 in attorney’s fees.
The Slate piece goes on to list a number of various lawsuits that Ricci was involved in over the years concludes, self -righteously:
Ultimately, there are two ways to frame Frank Ricci’s penchant for filing employment discrimination complaints: Perhaps he was repeatedly victimized by a cruel cadre of employers, first for his dyslexia, then again for his role as a whistle-blower, and then a third time for just being white. If that is so, we should all be deeply grateful for the robust civil rights laws that protect Americans from unfair discrimination in the workplace. I look forward to hearing Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s version of that speech next week.
The other way to look at Frank Ricci is as a serial plaintiff—one who reacts to professional slights and setbacks by filing suit, threatening to file suit, and more or less complaining his way up the chain of command. That’s not the typical GOP heartthrob, but I look forward to hearing Sen. Cornyn’s version of that speech next week as well.
Heh.
Well, it may not be the typical GOP heartthrob, but on the other hand it’s not at all to similar to what the civil rights groups have been doing for decades, now. I’ve made the point here several times that maybe it’s time we on the right started considering employment of some of those tactics.
As to Lithwick’s article;
Ultimately there are two ways to frame digging up this stuff and publishing it just now… either they are out to defend their uber liberal Supreme Court nominee, Sonya Sotomayor who comes up for confirmation this week. They apparently intend to support Sotomayor by discrediting Ricci in a national forum. Amusingly, they do so to in turn cast doubt on the ruling of the court they’re trying to confirm Sotomayor to.
The other way to look at this is the left thinks that the tactics used by civil rights groups in courts of law over the last several decades are only valid when the plaintiff isn’t a white male.
Or, both. Frankly, I’m not sure which is more troubling.
Tags: civil rights, civil rights group, civil rights laws, discrimination, Republican, Supreme Court, supreme court nominee
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July 12th, 2009 at 6:00
How far can this take the leftards? In the Ricci case, the neither bright nor wise Latina used against Ricci and all of his co-plaintiffs simply because of threat of a lawsuit by a protected minority.
So by the left’s logic, such as it it, Frank Ricci could be deprived of his civil rights on the basis of a mere threat of a a lawsuit. Whereas Ricci himself is some lower form of life because he used the courts to protect his rights. That is threatening Ricci with a lawsuit is good, but for Ricci to file a lawsuit is somehow bad.
July 12th, 2009 at 11:55
That’s always seem to me the crux of this argument anyway ; if we ever got to the point where the sheer illogic of the whole thing was exposed the left would cease using it as an argument. They wouldn’t be able to argue it from a logical standpoint, or for that matter, anything resembling morality or rule of law or anything else, for that matter. I will more than grant that this is probably an optimistic view, but it seems to me worth a try. At the very least it would expose the torrent of illogic coming from the left on matters of race.
And please don’t misunderstand my comment. I do not suspect that any of this is going to prevent Sotomayor from being confirmed. The democrats at this stage of the game have far too much in a way of numerical majority for anything like a logical thought to impose a limit of any kind to that process. At the least, however, it would show very clearly what we’re dealing with, here. The impact of that on the next few elections I think would be incalculable.