The city of Boston has paid $2.6 million to several Black police officers to settle a longstanding federal discrimination lawsuit over a hair test used to identify drug use, lawyers for the officers said Thursday.
The officers sued the city in 2005, claiming its hair test is discriminatory because black people's hair is more susceptible to false positives. The city and the company that performed testing for Boston police rejected any suggestion that the tests are racially biased.
This settlement puts an end to a long, ugly chapter in Boston's history," said Oren Sellstrom of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit that has represented the officers. "As a result of this flawed test, our clients' lives and careers were completely derailed. The city has finally compensated them for this grave injustice."
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