A lawsuit alleging the Chicago Fire Department used unnecessary physical tests to continue a “stubborn and purposeful” effort to block women from becoming paramedics could soon end in a $11.25 million settlement.
The city’s Law Department recommended the eight-figure deal, set to face two final votes by aldermen next week. The tests were “ill-matched” to actual paramedic work and failed 21% of the women who took them, but just 0.5% of male paramedic candidates, according to the 2016 lawsuit filed by 12 women blocked from the jobs.
“This testing has no legally defensible justification and eliminates a significant number of women, but virtually no men,” the lawsuit said. “Its discriminatory effect has not been accidental.”
The two tests were designed after the city dropped another such physical test that was found in court to be not job-related. In 2013, the city paid $2 million in damages to women denied CFD jobs because of a physical test for would-be firefighters.
In one of the new exams, in place between 2014 and 2015, candidates were required to carry a 250-pound mannequin up and down six flights of stairs without letting the “stair chair” touch the ground, according to the more recent lawsuit.
In the other “step test,” candidates were tasked with stepping up and down on an 18-inch box for two minutes in tune with an 112-beats-per-minute metronome while holding two 25-pound weights, the lawsuit said.
The exams had nothing to do with the work of a paramedic, the lawsuit argued. But they had an intention nonetheless: “driving women out of the Training Academy.”
The lawsuit also alleges broad failures to give basic accommodations to women in the Fire Department’s ranks. Firehouses citywide lacked “separate or adequate” sleeping quarters, showers and bathrooms for women, it argued.
Breast-feeding employees were also not given needed accommodations, the lawsuit said. One paramedic returning to work after giving birth was denied access to her breast bump, “resulting in excruciating physical pain and the humiliation of leaking breast milk through her uniform,” it said.
The Law Department is also recommending the City Council approve another $10.5 million in settlements next week.
City attorneys are asking aldermen to approve a $7.6 million deal for John Velez, who alleged in a 2018 federal lawsuit that he was wrongfully imprisoned for 16 years after Chicago police officers coerced his pregnant girlfriend into signing a fabricated statement accusing him of a murder.
Velez was convicted of the March 2021 murder of 26-year-old Anthony Hueneca, despite no physical evidence linking him to the Pilsen scene. Detectives concocted a false story accusing Velez of committing an “anniversary killing” to honor a slain uncle, the lawsuit said.
“Officers had no suspect and no witness who could describe the perpetrator, so they decided to pin the murder on someone,” Velez’s lawsuit alleged.
But his 80-year sentence was vacated in 2017 when a key witness recanted.
City attorneys also recommended the approval of a $2.5 million settlement for the family of Dana Hubbard. Hubbard was killed in an April 2019 car crash that ended a police chase.
Police had tried to stop the Dodge Charger of Clarence Hebron after running the car’s plates, according to the family’s lawsuit. When Hebron fled, officers pursued him east on South 59th Street. Hebron sped through an Englewood intersection at a red light and crashed into Hubbard’s car, killing her. Hubbard’s family alleges officers violated police car chase policy. They have also sued Hebron.
jsheridan@chicagotribune.com