Jordan V. City Of New London Case Study

The case of Jordan v. City of New London and Harrigan (1999) centers around Jordan bringing a civil rights action against the city and Harrington alleging that they denied him equal protection in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and Article 4, Section 20, of the Connecticut Constitution (Jordan v. City of New London, 2000).

The facts as presented to the court are that Jordan and 500 other police applicants voluntarily took the applicant screening examination for being a police officer in the state Connecticut in early 1996. The testing material included the Wonderlic Personnel Test and Scholastic Level Exam (WPT), which purports to measure cognitive ability. An accompanying manual listed recommended scores for various professions and

He made an inquiry into why he was not selected to interview and was told by assistant city manager Harrigan that he “didn’t fit the profile” (Jordan v. City of New London, 2000). Jordan assumed it was because of his age, 46 at the time, and filed a complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. The resulting response indicated it was not his age, but rather that he scored to high on the WPT and was essentially deemed over qualified and would most likely become bored and quit. The city chose to only interview applicants who scored 20-27, opposed to Jordan’s 33. Upon learning this information, Jordan filed a civil rights action against the city and assistant city

Additionally, a body of professional literature concludes that hiring overqualified applicants leads to subsequent job dissatisfaction and turnover. While such studies have been challenged, it cannot be said that their conclusions have been refuted” (Jordan v. City of New London, 1999). Lastly, the court the court further stated “The question presented is not whether a rational basis has been shown for the policy chosen by defendants. It is not for a trier to decide between two bodies of evidence in support of and in contradiction of the validity of that basis. Because defendants have shown that there is a rational basis for its policy, it cannot be found that the policy is arbitrary nor irrational. Plaintiff may have been disqualified unwisely but he was not denied equal protection” (Jordan v. City of New London,