After 15 years of litigation, a federal appeals court has thrown out a longstanding lawsuit in which black firefighters in Buffalo challenged a drug testing policy they said was discriminatory. In Men of Color Helping All Society v. City of Buffalo, 12-307-cv, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed Western District Judge John Curtin and concluded that no reasonable jury could find that the challenged policy was rooted in racial animus or that it infringed on the plaintiffs' due process or privacy rights.
"[E]ven if Plaintiffs-Appellants had adduced evidence of a discriminatory motive on which a reasonable jury might rely, they failed to come forward with any evidence that supports a finding that any one of them was treated differently than similarly situated white firefighters" the circuit said in a decision by Circuit Judges Jon Newman, Amalya Kearse and Debra Ann Livingston.
