The 5-4 decision controlled by the conservative wing raises the bar for employers seeking to change a test or other job criteria because it hurts minorities, or in other situations, women. It cautions employers not to act largely on lopsided statistics.

The decision in the New Haven, Conn., case also heightened the politics around President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the high court. She was a member of the panel that wrote the decision reversed by the justices.

Writing for the majority in the case brought by white firefighters denied promotion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the city violated a provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that bars discriminatory treatment. New Haven officials had said they were trying to meet a separate Title VII rule that bars tests that cause a discriminatory impact.

Officials said they acted against the interests of the whites because they believed the test was flawed and they feared lawsuits from the blacks and Hispanics who failed to qualify for promotion.

"The city … turned a blind eye to evidence that supported the exams' validity," Kennedy said, finding that New Haven lacked a required "strong basis in evidence" that it would face lawsuits from those who didn't score high enough for promotion.

Kennedy emphasized the mandate of Title VII: "No individual should face workplace discrimination based on race." The lead plaintiff in the challenge to the city's action was Frank Ricci, who is dyslexic and said he spent $1,000 on materials to prepare for the exam.

In an impassioned dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized the "twin pillars" of the civil rights law and invoked a history of bias in New Haven firehouses and throughout the country.

"Firefighting is a profession in which the legacy of racial discrimination casts an especially long shadow," she said, asserting that the written test that counted for 60% of the promotional exam was unlikely to show who would be good officers.

Civil rights activists and employment law attorneys said the new rule makes it tougher to address complaints about a potentially biased test.

"I think it has the potential to change things quite a bit" says James Burns, a Chicago lawyer specializing in employment law. "It puts employers between a rock and a hard place in deciding what to do if, after giving a test … statistics show that (it) had a disproportionate adverse effect."

Kennedy was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Sotomayor was a member of the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that had ruled for New Haven. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican, said the case "will only raise more questions" about Sotomayor's "commitment to treat each individual fairly." New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a committee Democrat, countered that she followed rules in place at the time she heard the case.

Contributing: Kathy Kiely

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