Firefighter Hiring Act Amendment Signed Into Law
Legal updates
Firefighter Hiring Act Amendment Signed Into Law
July 25, 2014
On July 16, 2014, Governor Quinn signed into law a long-anticipated amendment to the 2011 Firefighter Hiring Act. See Public Act 98-0760. As originally drafted, the Act required municipalities and fire protection districts to use the statistical “mean” as the passing grade for firefighter hiring written examinations and preliminary eligibility lists. Due to practical complications with this approach, the General Assembly changed the “mean” to the statistical “median” in 2012. In turn, the “median” has created legal problems for some communities in the form of threatened federal litigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has alleged that using the “median” can have a disparate impact on certain protected categories of applicants.
Presumably in response to this threatened litigation, the General Assembly has yet again modified the passing score for firefighter hiring written examinations and preliminary eligibility lists. Now, the Act simply states that the minimum score “should be set by the [hiring authority] so as to demonstrate a candidate’s ability to perform the essential functions of the job. The minimum score . . . shall be supported by appropriate validation evidence and shall comply with all applicable state and federal laws.” The amendment also provides that any “examination and testing procedure” utilized to measure a firefighter’s mental aptitude “shall be supported by appropriate validation evidence.” This amendment has no effect on firefighter promotional processes.
In light of these new-found requirements (which took immediate effect on July 16, 2014), municipalities and fire protection districts should review their firefighter hiring rules in order to determine whether their written examination and preliminary eligibility list passing scores need to be modified. While the recent amendment does not necessarily require a hiring authority to immediately abandon the “median” passing score, employers should nevertheless check with their testing consultants in order to ensure that the current passing score is indeed designed to “demonstrate a [firefighter] candidate’s ability to perform the essential functions of the job,” and that the score is “supported by appropriate validation evidence.”
The CBS LLP Legal Advisory is prepared for general information purposes only. The summaries of recent court opinions and other legal developments are not necessarily inclusive of all the recent legal authority of which you should be aware when making your legal decisions. Thus, while every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, you should not act on the information contained herein without seeking more specific legal advice on the application and interpretation of these developments to any particular situation.
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