Boston Employment Lawyer Blog

Betty Dukes worked for years at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, California, hoping for advancement. She found herself frustrated at the lack of promotion and poor treatment by managers. She believed their denial of opportunities to her was based on both her gender and her race. When her complaints to the corporation’s chain of command went unheard, she sought legal help. She became the face of the largest gender discrimination class action suit in United States history, Dukes v. Wal-Mart, first filed in a San Francisco federal court in 2001 and eventually including female Wal-Mart employees from all over the country. In 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district judge’s order allowing the case to proceed as a class action with nearly a million class members. The lawsuit has not gone well for the plaintiffs since then.

Wal-Mart appealed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, and it went to the United States Supreme Court. On June 20, 2011,the Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit, denying the plaintiffs the right to go forward as a class. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, held that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated that Wal-Mart had a “general policy of discrimination” that impacted all class members. In denying class certification, the Court noted that the plaintiffs worked in different stores in different regions and that they suffered different types of discrimination under different managers for different reasons.

The employees and their advocates, however, have not given up. New efforts to hold Wal-Mart accountable for alleged discrimination target smaller areas, rather than the entire country. New suits have been filed in California and Texas on behalf of plaintiffs from the original suit, and more regional suits may follow. These lawsuits tend to focus on the corporation’s stores within a single state, thus narrowing the scope of the alleged discrimination.

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In an unusual but welcome move, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Ash v. Tyson Foods has reversed its own decision in a race discrimination case. The court had overturned a jury verdict against Tyson Foods related to employment bias at a plant in Gadsden, Alabama. A brief filed by a retired Alabama federal judge and a group of civil rights leaders urged the court to reconsider its ruling. More than a year after its last ruling, the court reversed itself, albeit grudgingly. The New York Times' coverage on the decision can be viewed here.

This case has made its way through the appellate courts several times over the years. Two black employees at the Tyson plant, Anthony Ash and John Hithon, alleged discrimination based on race when they were passed over for promotion in favor of two white employees. The plaintiffs further alleged that their manager created a hostile work environment by frequently referring to adult black male employees as “boy.” They filed suit based on, among other causes of action, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When the case went to trial in 2002, the jury awarded the plaintiffs over $1.4 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

Following the jury verdict, the employer first appealed the case to the Eleventh Circuit. A three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit unanimously affirmed in part and reversed in part, finding that the evidence presented at trial was not sufficient to establish unlawful discrimination or to support the damage award. It held that the manager’s use of the word “boy,” in the absence of an adjective such as “black” or “white” is not in and of itself evidence of discriminatory intent. In 2006, the Supreme Court unanimously vacated the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling and remanded the case, rebuking the court for its finding regarding the manager’s language. The Supreme Court’s per curiam opinion noted that the circuit court should have considered factors like “context, inflection, tone of voice, local custom, and historical usage.”

At this point, Hithon pursed the case on his own, without Ash. When the Eleventh Circuit heard the case again, this time in 2010, it reached a conclusion similar to its earlier finding. In a 2-1 ruling, the court held that the manager’s use of the word “boy” was “conversational” and “nonracial in context,” and it once again mostly reversed the trial court’s verdict. Once again, the Eleventh Circuit's controversial ruling caught the attention of the New York Times in this article.

The Eleventh Circuit’s new ruling once again overlooked evidence beyond the words themselves. Testimony at trial by the plaintiffs and other witnesses established the connotation that the word "boy" evinces. Ash, for instance, told the jury that “being in the South, and everybody know [sic] being in the South, a white man says ‘boy’ to a black man, that’s an offensive word.”

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A lawsuit filed in federal court in Portland, Maine alleges that Kohl’s Department Stores unlawfully discriminated against an employee based on her disability. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed suit against the Wisconsin-based national retail store chain on behalf of Pamela Manning, who suffers from Type 1 diabetes. Manning worked at Kohl’s Westbrook, Maine store location. Because of her condition, she requires regular insulin injections. Beginning in January 2010, her complaint alleges, Kohl’s switched her full-time work schedule from a consistent daily schedule to an irregular one. This interfered with her daily routine of medical care. She presented her employer with a note from her doctor requesting that she have a regular work schedule, but Kohl’s refused to change it. She eventually developed health complications due to her inability to routinely administer her medications, and she had to quit her job with Kohl’s.

The EEOC filed suit in August 2011, alleging violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). It first attempted to settle the matter between Manning and Kohl’s through a conciliation process, which was unsuccessful. The lawsuit seeks monetary compensation for Manning and a revision of Kohl’s policies relating to disability discrimination. The EEOC’s Boston office is handling the litigation. They argue that it would have cost Kohl’s nothing to maintain a set schedule for Manning, but the cost of failing to do so was potentially catastrophic for Manning.

Kohl’s filed a response on October 24 denying liability and disability discrimination. According to a report in the American Journal, Kohl’s acknowledged changing Manning’s schedule in January 2010 but denied allegations regarding its knowledge of Manning’s diabetes. Kohl’s also admitted to receiving the note from Manning’s doctor but denies refusing to accommodate Manning’s needs. It claims that it makes “good faith efforts” to accommodate its employees’ scheduling needs. The Journal article does not mention how Kohl’s reconciles these seemingly contradictory claims.

The EEOC is a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Labor. Its purpose is to investigate allegations of employment discrimination and enforce federal anti-discrimination laws like the ADA and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When an employee makes a complaint, the EEOC will investigate and make a finding or recommendation as to whether it believes unlawful discrimination occurred. Occasionally, it will file a lawsuit directly on behalf of an employee. More often, it will issue a “right to sue” letter that gives the employee a window of time to file a court claim with the help of an employment discrimination lawyer.

Continue reading " Disability Discrimination Case Brought Against Kohl's " »