EEOC announces $3.2 million settlement in race case

As reported by the AP in Findlaw here, national haircutting chain Supercuts Inc. has agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle a claim by a former [apparently white] manager that he was fired for refusing to participate in a plan to reduce the number of black employees.

Most of the settlement will go to black workers who were denied promotions, fired or turned away during the application process from November 1996 to December 2001 in 11 states and Puerto Rico.

Read the EEOC press release here.

Although many of the applicants and employees who will receive a portion of the settlement may not have actually been victims of discrimination, the company settled to avoid having to litigate so many separate employment decisions, many of which occurred so long ago that little evidence of the reasons for the decisions may remain (particularly decisions not to hire, whre the paper trail is typically thin and short-lived, at best).

In litigating each employee’s right to relief, had the case gone on, the evidence provided by the turncoat terminated manager would have been used against the employer to establish a “pattern and practice” of discrimination. It would have been an enormously expensive case to fully litigate.

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