Judge Rules That Police Can Bar High I.Q. Scores

An anonymous reader writes "A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test. Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected." Update: 04/16 22:01 GMT by T : Mea culpa. This story slipped through; consider it a time-machine / late-April Fool's day joke, please.

This raises interesting new legal possibilities...

[Nick_13ro]

Next I propose they develop a skin pigmentation test. Those with too much skin pigmentation, too colored let's say, are to be barred from the police force. Naturally this would also be ok since the same standard was applied to everyone, right ?

Re:Holy Old Story!

[The End Of Days]

Awww now I miss the the stupid things the government did before 9/11 turned them into wholesale Constitution tramplers.

Seriously?

[nedlohs]

Timothy you are an idiot.

I take it slashdot uses the same policy.

Re:Not unexpected...

[causality]

First class people choose first class people; second class people choose fourth class people; third class people choose ninth class people; and so on; and so on.

It's a failure of the moderation system that I need to scroll past a dozen irrelevant comments about the article's date before I find one that addresses the actual topic. Anyway...

Not only are you right about this, but the logic the judge used was quite faulty and I can trivially demonstrate why:

Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.

Using that logic, they could discriminate racially or on religious grounds. "Anyone who scored too black was rejected" or "anyone who scored too Muslim was rejected". I mean hey, they apply that standard to everyone so it surely could not contradict the principles of equal protection. That's why this is absurd.

I'll never understand what it is about a law degree and a bench that fundamentally distorts someone's ability to use solid logic. If I can see the flaw in seconds couldn't this judge maybe think on it a bit before committing it to a ruling that will affect a man's life?

It's as though the judge had a personal objection to having high-IQ police officers and was looking for an excuse to disallow them.

Re:The Rationale Behind It

[Man On Pink Corner]

I know the sheriff was trying to give an example of a dilemma that's likely to come up in police work, but the example he chose seems like a no-brainer, with a very clear right and wrong answer. You call in a description of your neighbor's car so other officers can look for it, then help the clerk. He'll probably be able to ID the robber or at least provide some solid clues in the event the suspect escapes the dragnet, but he can't do that if he's dead.

If you let the clerk die and fail to catch the suspect, you're no better off than you were before, and you have one more stiff in the morgue. Even if you do catch the robber, the dead clerk will still haunt your whole department, in the form of bad press and lawsuits.

One option will be second-guessed endlessly regardless of the final outcome, and the other will make you look like a hero, or at least someone who tried to help.

What's important is that you quickly choose a response and follow it through to the end.

Reminds me of a recent case in Seattle, where a roid-raging berserker with a badge emptied his Glock into a bum who was whittling with a pocket knife, after giving him four seconds to "comply." Somebody forgot to tell him that Robocop was not a training film.

Re:Seriously...

[Dunbal]

Yeah the excuse was that it's not discrimination because they refused to higher ANY high IQ applicants. So by that same standard, if you refuse to hire any black people you are not discriminating either. Wtf - only in America, land of the double standard.