You study hard, you put in 10-12 hours per day, you prepare months in advance to sit for a civil service exam. We don't know who you are because the name of the applicant is a coded number known only to the testing authorities. Twenty individuals took the test, all of them had advance notice and all had equal access to the subject matter; they knew what was coming. The day of the test finally arrived.

A month later the results were in, one person scored a 100. The other scores went down from there, 92 down to 50. However, when it came time to make the decision on who to hire, the powers in charge said, "wait a minute, the test is unfair, the results can't be true, my hand picked candidate flunked." And the top gun, the mayor in this case, disregarded the results. He said, "the test was unfair to those who did not score high" and therefore they had no chance to be chosen for the position.

What happened next is surreal, the mayor slighted those who were at the top of the list and hand picked his own candidates.  An outcry was heard across the land, lawsuits ensued. The appellate court weighed in and agreed with mayor. The court said, "the test was unfair, this was manifested by the results." Because a certain group of people did not pass the test, we the court can infer the unfairness of it. They disregard the possibility that those who did not pass the test perhaps did not study or did study but were not able to comprehend the material and failed. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court of our great nation, and they, with all of their wisdom, threw out the Appellate court verdict.  Those who passed the exam were blatantly discriminated against and are due justice. This was no fairy tale. In fact it is real life. See the story below and the actual players involved.

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer Mark Sherman, Associated Press Writer –