A recent string of lawsuits by the Department of Justice (DOJ) against police and fire departments could serve as a blueprint for erasing physical and mental standards in the name of equity.

The DOJ settled two lawsuits and filed a third against local departments in October accusing them of discrimination after black applicants disproportionately failed to pass cognitive written tests and female applicants struggled to pass physical tests. The DOJ deemed the tests discriminatory due to the results, despite applicants of all races and both genders being subject to the same standards.

The three lawsuits, all filed within weeks of each other, could be just the start as a Harris administration would accelerate the process “10x,” one expert told the Daily Caller.

Under an early October settlement, Maryland’s State Police (MDSP) will pay previously denied applicants over $2.75 million in backpay after the DOJ launched a probe into “racially discriminatory hiring and promotion practices.” (RELATED: Biden-Harris DOJ Makes Maryland Hire Fat Female Cops)

The DOJ complaint alleges MDSP’s use of a written test called the Police Officer Selection Test (POST) “disproportionately excluded African-American applicants” and that its use of the Functional Fitness Assessment Test (FFAT) “disproportionately excluded female applicants.”

Of the twelve academy classes that MDSP has graduated since 2017, 91% of their white applicants passed the POST compared to only 71 percent of black applicants, according to the DOJ.

This, the DOJ alleges, “has had an adverse impact on African-American applicants for the trooper position.”

Additionally, the FFAT, which consists of push-up and sit-up tests, a 1.5 mile run and a flexibility test, saw a markedly lower pass rate for female applicants. Men passed at an 81 percent clip while women only passed 51 percent of the time since 2017, according to the DOJ.

The tests, the complaint argues, “are not job related or consistent with business necessity.”

Law enforcement officers, however, disagreed.

“It’s important that they have to catch bad guys. It’s important that they’re in good shape, that they have standards,” Klickitat County, Washington, Sheriff Bob Songer told the Daily Caller.

“That keeps them in good health, physical condition, because out on the street there, when you’re a patrol officer or detective, primarily a patrol officer, when you answer those calls, you don’t know from one minute to the next whether you’re going to be in a fight with an individual who is going to take you on because they don’t like what you’re doing, they don’t respect authority,” Songer told the Caller.

Police, Songer noted, need to have standards because they have “an awesome responsibility” working in “the only career I know of, outside of war, where you may be called upon to take a human life under certain circumstances.”

Less than a week after Maryland’s settlement, Durham Fire Department also settled with the DOJ over a similar claim. The DOJ alleged “that the City’s fire department screens applicants with a written test that discriminates against Black candidates.”

Durham’s written test, the Comprehensive Examination Battery (CEB), also “disproportionately excluded African-American applicants from employment,” according to the DOJ complaint.

As a result, Durham will issue $980,000 in backpay to previously denied applicants and use a new test.

The CEB, created by Fire and Police Solutions Inc. (FPSI), consists of basic arithmetic questions.

A practice test circulating on Twitter, which FPSI officials confirmed to the Daily Caller come from their Candidate Orientation Guides, consists of multiple choice questions such as the following:

“What is the total weight of four firefighters who weigh 202 pounds, 186 pounds, 133 pounds and 211 pounds.”

Third question: Try not to get too disoriented. pic.twitter.com/hS8h6dmrWq

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) October 9, 2024

FPSI offers the practice guides online to help potential candidates, “even though no preparation is necessary since the skills and abilities measured on the test have all been identified, by subject-matter experts in the validation study, as skills and abilities that firefighters need to possess first day on the job,” FPSI President Stacy Bell told the Daily Caller.

If Maryland and Durham’s tests are considered racist and sexist, hundreds of other departments across the country could find themselves exposed by the same standard.

Police departments nationwide have used the POST test named in the Maryland State Police lawsuit. Departments in states ranging from California to Tennessee have posted practice POST tests online for incoming applicants to study with. Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Police appear to still use the test, even uploading a practice POST test on their website as recently as 2022.

The DOJ’s lawsuits allege the use of the tests violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — specifically a standard known as “disparate impact.”

Title VII prohibits employers from engaging in any explicit discrimination. But it also bars employers from hiring practices “that seem neutral but have the effect of discriminating against people because of their race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity), or national origin.”

In other words, disparate impact is when different groups have different outcomes when being given the same test. Proponents argue the inequal outcomes are evidence of bias even if everyone is taking the same test.

Jeremy Carl, a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute and author of “The Unprotected Class” calls disparate impact “an absurd doctrine.”

The doctrine, Carl argues in his book, stems from the 1971 Supreme Court decision in “Griggs vs. Duke Power.”

Duke Power enacted IQ and mechanical aptitude tests for potential employees. While the court found no racial component to the test and did not allege any explicit discrimination, because white applicants passed at a higher rate than black ones, they found it violated Title VII. Thus, Carl says, disparate impact was born.

And while its immediate impacts might be obvious, there are long-term repercussions gurgling beneath the surface.

“Disparate impact is really worse in a lot of the stuff that you’re not seeing. Because what happens is people don’t do the test, or they don’t put in the requirement, because HR is sitting there saying, ‘Well, you could be open to a disparate impact lawsuit.’ So the defenders of this will say, ‘Oh, well, it happens in this relatively small number of cases,’ but there’s a lot of churn under the water that you’re not seeing, a lot of the damage is just in people not doing the right thing.”

Local governments across the country are proving Carl’s point.

In May, the executive director of Denver’s Civil Service Commission Niecy Murray was fired after raising concerns that Mayor Mike Johnston was lowering safety standards in the city’s fire and police departments to hire more officers.

While outfits like Durham and Maryland caved, one city is fighting back.

In Indiana, after the South Bend Police Department learned of the DOJ’s impending lawsuit (through the DOJ’s press release), they vowed to “vigorously defend” against the pending action.

“The South Bend Police Department believes its screening process fairly measures a candidate’s ability to perform the job,” SBPD wrote in an Oct. 11 Facebook post. “Like every other city in Indiana, South Bend must ensure its officers meet certain minimum criteria.”

The Facebook post also noted the department’s written test is administered by a third party, Testing For Public Safety LLC., and is used by other police departments in the state, including Indiana State Police.

Ruszkowski was not the only one to point out the inconsistency,

“Ironic the Justice Department has not said a word about its law enforcement branch – the FBI – and its physical standards,” John H. Ohrnberger, a national trustee for the Fraternal Order of Police of Virginia, told the Daily Caller.

“If you look at the FBI standards and compare it to South Bend, the only difference is the trigger pull and vertical jump requirements. The FBI academy then has to eliminate or wash out recruits who may have passed the entrance physical exam but can not shoot a gun or physically make it through the academy. I think maybe the Justice Department should look within before they engage in these types of lawsuits,” Ohrnberger told the Caller.

The three civil agencies join the gas station Sheetz, who the Biden-Harris Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued in April under Title VII because they screened applicants for criminal histories. If Harris wins in November, these suits could be just the beginning.

“With the Biden-Harris radical DOJ, it’s inevitable that you’re going to see an upsurge in these sorts of cases,” Carl told the Caller.

“When Republicans control the White House, the DOJ is liberal. When the Democrats control the White House, it’s radical,” he concluded.

The Daily Caller reached out to the Department of Justice for comment but did not hear back by time of publication.