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On February 13, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in his sleep at the age of 79, marking only the second time in more than 60 years that a sitting justice on the Court has died. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 1986, Scalia's 29-year tenure was the longest of any current Supreme Court judge. Scalia's adherence to originalism-a belief that constitutional interpretation should be based on the original meaning of the text-not only set him apart from his contemporaries but also made him more controversial. Regardless of how history interprets Scalia's three-decade legacy on the bench, immediately more impactful for public safety professionals is the uncertainty left in his wake.

A fitness test is an effective and legal device for screening first responders, but only when designed and implemented in a particular way. Though some believe that the daily demands of public safety professionals are enough to maintain adequate levels of fitness, this is a faulty and dangerous assumption. Even though the most common tasks performed by first responders do not involve physical exertion, the primary goal of training and fitness should be to ensure that first responders are able to get to, control and remove a threat to public safety. Because individuals with poor fitness may be incapable of performing these essential tasks, departments with lax or no standards are at risk for lawsuits based on negligence and deliberate indifference. Implementing overly-stringent standards is hardly a panacea for a department's litigation woes. If standards are based on, relative to, or disparately impact members of a protected class, then rejected applicants may allege discrimination under state or federal law.