. A city fire department has a voluntary affirma-tive action program. It is not disputed that the department had previously discriminated against women and that only 1 percent of fire depart-ment employees were female at the time the plan was adopted in 1984. The plan established a long-term goal of 36 percent female utiliza-tion based on the proportion of women in the population (52 percent) but reduced by a third to account for the fact that many women would not have the interest or ability to be firefighters. By 1997, 11.6 percent of firefighters were female. The applicant pool that year was 22 percent fe-male, and 27 percent of the persons hired were female. The department gives preferences to women in hiring by allowing all women who pass the written test to be included in the appli-cant pool (for males, there is a lottery because of the large number of applicants) and by treating female gender as a plus in making final hiring decisions. A group of males, unsuccessful in obtaining jobs as firefighters, sued. What should the court decide? Why?