NEW YORK - The largely white Fire Department of New York has discouraged racial diversity by using recruitment exams that inadvertently discriminate against blacks and Hispanics, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Monday in a civil rights lawsuit.

A complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn alleges that the fire department administered in 1999 and 2002 exams that, while not purposely or obviously racist, were littered with SAT-like questions that do nothing to measure an applicant's ability to fight fires.

“The city's testing practices ... do not select the firefighter applicants who will best perform their important public safety mission, while disproportionately screening out large numbers of qualified black and Hispanic applicants,” said Wan J. Kim, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit was prompted by what critics describe as the fire department's woeful record on minority recruitment when compared to other big city departments including the New York Police Department. Of the roughly 11,000 firefighters, only about 3 percent are black and 4.5 percent are Hispanic; the NYPD is 16.3 percent black and 25.3 percent Hispanic.

“The claims are complex, but the case can be summed up in one line: New York City's fire department is 2.9 percent African-American,” said Shayana Kadidal, a senior attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The center sparked the federal probe by filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2002 on behalf of the Vulcan Society, a fraternal order of black firefighters.

City officials accused federal authorities of making misleading allegations about outdated written exams. They said recent recruitment efforts have resulted in triple the number of blacks and double the number of Hispanics taking the latest exam.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he had made a personal appeal to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales not to take legal action.

“I thought it was an outrage when he threatened to sue us if we didn't cave in,” the mayor said. “I think we're doing what's right. ... We've created a new test, which we believe is fair to everyone, and we're going to ride with that test.”

A city lawyer, Georgia Pestana, said in a statement that the suit “will do nothing to increase fire department diversity” and “will only waste the resources of the city and federal government.”

The complaint demands that the FDNY end “policies and practices that discriminate against blacks and Hispanics and that deprive (them) of employment opportunities because of race and/or national origin.”

It cites a wide disparity between the scores of whites and those of blacks and Hispanics on the exams taken in 1999 and 2002. Because of the results, blacks and Hispanics “were underrepresented among higher-scoring applicants” on a list of eligible applicants from which the fire department intends to draw entry-level firefighters through May 2008.