The park service disputed the group's claims about discrimination, however.
Michael Spurr, the chief executive of the national offender management service, who heads the prison service, disputed the finding.
Walter D. Cruickshank, the deputy director of the management service, disputed the idea that the agency had a history of deference to the industry or a pattern of lax oversight.
The STB is the independent adjudicatory and economic-regulatory agency "charged by Congress with resolving railroad rate and service disputes and reviewing proposed railroad mergers," according to its mission statement.
Daniel Elliott is the chairman of the Surface Transportation Board, an economic regulatory agency that resolves railroad rate and service disputes, reviews proposed railroad construction projects and mergers, and has certain regulatory or administrative functions involving passenger rail, inter-city passenger bus, trucking, moving van, non-contiguous ocean shipping, and pipeline companies.
In three days of questioning over Ricci, Sotomayor managed to make an incendiary case sound like a civil-service dispute whose disposition was commanded not by notions of an ideal civil society but strictly by the facts at hand — which, to a judge unwilling to set aside precedent in the name of fundamental fairness, it was.
In three days of questioning over Ricci, Sotomayor has managed to make an incendiary case sound like a mere civil-service dispute whose disposition was commanded not by notions of a more perfect civil society, but strictly by the applicable precedent — which, to a large extent, it was.
Critics of the helicopter services disputed that claim.
In a telephone interview after the hearing, Marty Oestreicher, the department's chief executive of school support services, disputed that figure.
Mr. Francis defends that N.A.S.D. rule, saying financial services disputes can be so complicated only trained specialists can understand them.
