In 1988, a group of female and minority [sic] plaintiffs filed suit against the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD), challenging their hiring and promotional practices as discriminatory and winning. While most of these issues were resolved in earlier lawsuits, this case deals with contested attorney's fees, as well as the amount of backpay due to six black firefighters who the court ordered to be retroactively promoted to lieutenant in light of prior confirmed discrimination. The City deemed both the amount of attorney's fees as well as backpay as excessive.

In the "Factual Background" summary, the court notes: "The SFFD has long been subject to suits alleging discrimination in its hiring and promotion of firefighters. In 1970, when only four of the Department's eighteen hundred firefighters were black, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed suit in federal district court challenging the validity of the entry-level hiring test used by the Department." Later, a group of black firefighters argued that the test used to determine promotions at SFFD disciminated on the basis of race. Tests used in hiring were also called into question, and, in 1986, the City of San Francisco declared that it would no longer defend the validity of these tests.

The result of this earlier suit was a decree, which "provides that of the firefighters hired over its seven year lifespan, at least nineteen percent should be Asian, ten percent should be black, and eleven percent should be Hispanic. Altogether, fifty-five percent of the firefighters hired are to be members of a minority group, and ten percent of the firefighters hired are to be female." It also provides for specific recruitment efforts geared at women and minorities [sic]. These cases navigated the complex bureaucracy of the City of San Francisco, and this particular case the award of interest on backpay was provided, while the resolution of the attorney's fees issue is to detailed and complex to summarize here.