New Haven’s Racial Test

But the city’s civil service board refused to certify the results and no promotions were approved. Seventeen white candidates and one Hispanic candidate sued, charging a denial of their 14th Amendment rights, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and other federal laws.

The board found the racially disparate results of the tests unacceptable. New Haven’s population is 37.4% black, but no African-American was among the top performers on either exam. The highest-scoring black candidate for a captaincy ranked 16th, behind 12 whites and three Latinos. On the lieutenant’s exam, the strongest black performers ranked 14th, 15th and 16th.
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The city proclaimed the New Haven test must have been biased, given the results. An amicus brief for the International Association of Professional Black Firefighters declared flatly that it was “widely known and accepted that cognitive examinations, such as used here, have a demonstrated adverse impact on blacks and other minorities.” The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a “four-fifths rule,” which holds that a job-related test in which the passing rate of a racial minority is less than 80% of the white rate is presumptively flawed.

This doesn’t look like judicial activism. She was upholding existing federal law. You might not like those laws but they are laws.