by Matt Barr

Equality of result

Here's a short post worth reading in its entirety about the Atlanta courthouse shootings.

[N]one of the press is directly talking about a contributing cause to the breach of security. When 33-year-old, 6'1" 210-pound former college football player Brian G. Nichols was unrestrained for purposes of changing out of his jailhouse jumpsuit into civilian clothes for trial, he was being guarded by 5'0" 51-year-old grandmother Deputy Cynthia Hall.

Fulton County, like almost every (if not every) jurisdiction, has watered down its strength requirements for police and firefighters for fear that they would be considered discriminatory towards women because of the disparate impact of those requirements. Once a plaintiff shows that job qualifications have a disparate impact, the burden falls on the employer to prove that the requirements are bona fide and that no other selection mechanisms can be substituted, regardless of discriminatory intent. San Francisco formerly asked fire recruits to carry a 150-pound sack up a flight of stairs and now lets them drag a 40-pound sack across a smooth floor.

There are no doubt strong women capable of being deputies who can guard 210-pound violent criminals. There should be no bar to hiring them. The reduction of standards to achieve equality of result, rather than just equality of opportunity, can lead to tragic consequences.

(Citations and parentheticals omitted; link via The Right Coast.) Casting about for someone to blame for this doesn't take long: It's Nichols' fault, and I'm confident he'll face the music. But if you can hear over the clamor for greater security for judges (such as this one and this one and this one and, to hear Google News tell it, "all 2,625 related"), this issue needs to be brought to the fore.

The unfortunately American instinct to spend more money and pass more regulations had already been activated after the deaths of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother in Chicago. Federal Bar Association President Thomas Schuck wrote President Bush this week asking him "immediately to assess and assure that funding for security requirements is adequate and that all prudent arrangements for the protection of judicial personnel, their families, and our public courthouses have been made," the New York Times and many others reported. American Bar Association President Robert J. Grey Jr. told Congress in a written statement Friday that "We must do everything in our power to make sure our courts are secure and safe, including considering providing home security systems for every judge." Some judges favor "hiring criminologists or psychologists to review court dockets regularly to help them flag unstable or dangerous litigants," the Los Angeles Times said.

Assigning deputies proportional in height and heft to the defendants they're to cover would do more than anything else. Are we too politically correct to do it?

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