Superior Court reverses Commission decision

In 2010, the Civil Service Commission upheld a psychological bypass of a candidate for the Boston Police Department under unusual circumstances. In a 3-2 decision, a majority of the Commission voted to uphold the bypass, yet they also accepted the factual findings made by Commissioner Daniel Henderson, who served as the hearing officer and voted to grant the appeal and overturn the bypass. Now a Superior Court judge has reversed that decision and overturned the bypass because the Commission did not sufficiently explain why it reached an opposite conclusion from Henderson while accepting his findings. The Superior Court ruled that since the Commission rejected the conclusions of the hearing officer, its substituted conclusion must be supported by substantial evidence. The Court ruled that the accepted factual findings could not support the bypass, and thus the conclusion required new findings of fact. As none were made, the Commission's decision was reversed.