I think the hearing went okay, but there's no way to tell until we actually get a ruling. What's galling is Boston's assertion that the department never had a policy of refusing to accept passports as proof of citizenship. The department's position is that some ill-informed officers in the licensing unit were making this 'mistake' on their own. The problem is that this is a long-standing practice of the department. Not only has BPD documented this on their web-site, I clearly remember being told by a now retired officer when I applied for my first Boston LTC that I had to produce a birth certificate and that a passport was not acceptable. I know many other people who have been told this over the years and even decades.
A couple of things to remember here. There is no statutory requirement that an applicant prove that they're a citizen. Once a PD establishes and applicant's identity and submits their fingerprints to IDENT, they can easily determine if the person is disqualified from a license due to nationality. A birth certificate is also not dispositive of citizenship. There are a number of scenarios, although unusual, where someone may have a US birth certificate, but not be a US citizen. If someone has a valid US passport they are always a citizen.