Abercrombie’s case settled; Secret Service class claims are dismissed
While Abercrombie & Fitch just settled a class action lawsuit for employment discrimination (See George’s posting the Abercrombie & Fitch settlement, where he expresses, shall we say, rather strong feelings! I’m surprised he hasn’t teamed up with pointoflaw.com yet), the U.S. Secret Service class claim was recently dismissed by a judge. That case involved
African-American Secret Service agents who charged that the agency engaged in a pattern and practice of racial discrimination in promotions, as well as in hiring, performance evaluations, bonuses, and so forth.
After years of alleged problems, this motion for class certification was dismissed by the judge. The grounds for dismissal was stated as the plaintiffs failed “to exhuast their administrative remedies.” Specifically, the judge ruled that this action was filed before the 180-day period for EEOC to investigate the class claim had expired, and therefore the plaintiffs had not yet exhausted their administrative remedies. The judge did allow some of the plainiffs’ individual claims of discrimination to survive the motion.
The class would have included approximately 250 current and former Secret Service agents.
Click here
to get the plaintiffs’ perspective on this recent outcome.
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Comments
I worked at Abercrombie in the 90’s when the image first came out.
We let people go for age, weight, and dress, but not color.
One could argue that those characteristics are or are not race based, but I left when the old haberdashery look with good clothing was replaced with poor quality clothing and a younger style. I was 22 at the time, and it was 1996.
The answer to how they could hire minorities and then fire them is an easy one. They hire part time for the retail season, and often have manpower problems. So a manager in a bind hires people, often that are borderline on the “Style” guide.
The Quarterly reviews come in from upper management and the buyers, and then the word comes down on which people are quietly to be let go. First their hours are cut, then the personal meetings about dress and the need to buy more expesnive clothes.
For $5.15 an hour, buying $45 shirts and pants is not economically feasible for 10 hours a week. Problem solved.
I’m surprised it took this long. I was ready to testify on a blatant case of age discrimination back then.
Today is November 17th, 2004. I am elated to see our local newspaper titling “Abercrombie and Fitch to pay $40 million in job bias lawsuit”
They don’t just discriminate, I believe they even train their employees to discriminate.
When I, an Asia woman, tried to purchase a birthday present for a friend in December, 2004 at an Abercrombie store in San Diego, I felt the rudeness, indifference and condescending demeanor from their young blond staff members (3-4 of them in that store). Witnessing their warm greetings to other fair skin Americans I left the store.
As I walked out, I remembered having left the birthday card I just purchased earlier on the cashier’s counter at Abercrombie. I quickly returned, there was an empty counter, I proceed to ask the two young blond sale-ladies. I was greeted with a stare-down and a quick shake of heads and they both looked away.
Thank God there’s justice!!!!!!!!!!1
Perhaps I used strong language (if B.S. counts for that). But my only strong feelings were that Abercrombie’s image thing misses the mark with me as a shopper!
The point about firing discrimination is based on the valid same decisionmaker defense — where the person hiring is the same as the person firing, there must be something that happened to turn the person into a racist — if he/she already was one, why would he/she hire a black/female, etc. in the first place?
This defense is subject to criticism no doubt, but I was just mentioning that it seemed strange to argue they have a white male image and then have to admit a bunch of blacks were hired — only to be fired. Perhaps the hiring was a charade to avoid the appearance of blatant racism?
As to the motives of class action lawyers, their actions speak for themselves. Show me one who donated the better part of a multi-million dollar fee to charity, and I’ll change my tune. Until then, I’m with the folks who find that too often class action lawyers’ fees are disproportionate to the value of their services to the good of society.
Whom do I blame? Judges who allow these settlements without insisting on greater proportionality and justification when it comes to the fee portion of the deal.
I’ll stand by the last point I made — I don’t see anything new here as a matter of law. In fact, by diluting the race/sex claims with other image characteristics like “preppy,” the plaintiffs make their case harder. Someone may be turned away for not matching the image, but who’s to say it’s because they were black/female, etc. rather than because they were wearing the wrong kind of shoes to the interview?
Finally, you don’t have to agree with pointoflaw.com, but you still should check it out. They have a definite bias and edge, but they’re also a bunch of very sharp guys, seems to me.