In 1985, a U.S. district court approved an affirmative action plan for the Washington, D.C. (D.C.), fire department which required that 60 percent of new hires be black. D.C. itself was predominantly black, with 65 percent of the workforce and up to 75 percent of the applicants from D.C. being black.
Twenty-nine percent of the entire metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, from which D.C. recruited firefighters, was black. In 1983, 80 percent of the new hires were black. In 1982, 67.5 percent of the new hires were black. Over a four-year period an average of 75 percent of those hired were black. Between 1980 and 1984, virtually every candidate who showed up to take the test for firefighter passed it because the cut-off score was set so low that even random answering of questions would lead to a passing mark. D.C.'s goal in its affirmative action plan was to achieve racial parity in its firefighting force.

The plaintiffs contended that the evidence was clear that the fire department was not engaging in hiring practices that discriminated against blacks and that no dismantling of the structures of past discrimination remained for the courts. They contended that the plan and its goal were illegal.
D.C. stated that the fire department was just 38 percent black, while the working-age population of D.C. was 70 percent black.
D.C. contended that "plantation politics" were practiced in D.C. for more than a century. It stated that the plaintiffs urged D.C. to forget the bad old days of discrimination and concentrate on the purity of current practices; however, it argued that racial parity would be lost without the 60 percent hiring goal.

What standard must a court apply in reviewing whether a city's race-conscious affirmative action quotas are permissible? On the limited evidence before you, were D.C.'s hiring practices discriminatory considering the qualified and relevant labor market? Is D.C.'s goal of achieving racial parity constitutionally valid? Decide. [Hammond v. Barry, 42 EPD ¶ 36,804 (D.C. Cir.)]