NEW YORK – The Liberal Arts and Sciences Test administered to gauge the basic competency of New York teachers between 2004 and 2012 is racist, and the city may owe those who failed it back pay.

Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba M. Wood issued a ruling last Friday that found the test racially discriminatory based on the fact that more white people passed it than black or Hispanic teaching candidates, The New York Times reports.

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“According to Friday’s decision … the pass rate for African-American and Latino candidates was between 54 percent and 75 percent of the pass rate for white candidates,” according to the news site.

“Once it was established that minority applicants were failing at a disproportionately high rate, the burden shifted to education officials to prove that the skills being tested were necessary to do the job; otherwise, the test would be ruled discriminatory.”

Education officials apparently didn’t meet their burden of proof.

Court records show the company that devised the test, National Evaluation Systems, sent New York teachers surveys to understand whether the test measured knowledge relevant to teaching, but Wood found the surveys to have too small of a sample size and may not accurately reflect what it takes to be a teacher, according to the Times.

“Instead of beginning with ascertaining the job tasks of New York teachers, the last two LAST examinations began with the premise that all New York teachers should be required to demonstrate an understanding of the liberal arts,” Wood wrote in his ruling.

The Daily Caller reported on some of the questions in the allegedly racist test.

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“One sample question from the test asked prospective educators to identify the mathematical principle of a linear relationship when given four examples; another asked them to read four passages from the Constitution and identify which illustrated checks and balances. Besides factual knowledge, the test also checks basic academic skills, such as reading comprehension and the ability to read basic charts and graphs,” according to the site.

Here’s one of the questions:

Which of the following is a fundamental assumption of this method of estimating the distance between an observer and a bolt of lightning?

* The wavelength of light is much shorter than the wavelength of sound.
* The speed at which light travels is so great that the time required for the light waves to reach the observer is essentially zero.
* Sound waves are more strongly affected by atmospheric conditions than are light waves.
* The speed at which sound and light travel varies proportionately with the distance they travel.

The Times reports the recent ruling applies to the second version of the LAST test – known as the LAST-2, which followed a previous version administered between 1993 and 2004 that was also found to be racist.

The initial ruling that the LAST favored whites led to 3,900 lawsuits against the city’s education system that are currently pending. The LAST-2 ruling expected to draw a similar response.

New York City Law Department officials told the Times the LAST-2 ruling “was expected,” while the city’s education department declined to comment.

Both the LAST and LAST-2 are now long gone, but a new Academic Literacy Skills Test developed to take its place is already drawing allegations of racism, despite the fact that the state’s Board of Regents agreed to postpone the requirement that teaching candidates pass the ALST to gain certification, the Times reports.

“This spring, Judge Wood began questioning whether that test, too, was racially discriminatory,” according to the Times. “A hearing is scheduled on the issue later this month.”

According to the Daily Caller:

LAST-2 hasn’t been used in New York since 2012, but the ruling will still have repercussions. Minorities who failed the exam (who number in the thousands) may be owed years of back pay totaling millions of dollars, and those who were relegated to substitute teaching jobs could be promoted to having their own classrooms. In addition, while Wood’s ruling only applies to New York City, the test was used statewide, and it could serve as a precedent for further lawsuits.

The ruling could also pave the way for another ruling finding New York’s current teacher test, the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), to be discriminatory as well. That test is even harder than LAST-2, with a strong focus on literacy skills such as writing and reading comprehension, and like LAST-2 it has a very large gap in scores between whites and minorities. A lawsuit, once again being heard by Wood, is already pending, with the plaintiffs arguing that there is no clear evidence strong literacy skills are essential for a teacher.