First, a story from here in St. Louis, but reported in the Miami Herald (AP-Cheryl Wittenauer):
“Judge rules for Boeing in Missouri discrimination case”
In a sex discrimination case against Boeing, U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry denied class-action status and granted summary judgment on the claims of discrimination in overtime.
The Missouri lawsuit . . . joined similar complaints against Boeing filed the same day in Kansas and California. A similar case against Boeing was filed three months later in Oklahoma. The lawsuits alleged Boeing denied women promotions, equal pay, overtime and other employment opportunities because of their gender. They also cite cases of sexual harassment.
The St. Louis plaintiffs cited an analysis of Boeing data, contending female employees were overlooked for promotions and raises. The judge concluded that some managers in some groups may use their discretion to discriminate against women, but the data do not show a company-wide policy of discrimination.
Six of the nine St. Louis plaintiffs were part of a . . . case . . . against Boeing in Washington state . . . that sought to establish a class of female Boeing employees around the country. The Washington court certified the class but limited it to Washington employees . . . .
[A] federal judge in Kansas . . . withdrew class-action status for the bulk of the claims brought by the women. The judge in the California case denied class action status late last year, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to consider the women’s appeal . . . . However, on Monday a federal judge in Tulsa certified as a class action the lawsuit filed on behalf of female Boeing workers in Oklahoma.
The plaintiffs’ attorney offered this rationale for using the class action approach in such cases:
“Their injury might be $10,000, but companies have huge war chests for fighting such cases” . . . . “By grouping them together, we try to level the playing field.” Read more
Where’s the “level playing field” in a “shotgun” approach that throws together such diverse issues as promotions, equal pay, overtime, and sexual harassment, in five different states, to maximize the scope and expense of discovery, and then tries to wear the company down (and get lucky with one of numerous judges) by litigating in five different courts?
Clearly the name of this game is to get paltry thousands for each women while scoring milllions for each attorney(or more).
Judge Perry is nobody’s fool. She’s not known as being a pushover for employers, but is very sharp and well acquainted with employment litigation. She knows that with a large company like Boeing the decisions in question are not made as part of some discriminatory conspiracy raining down from company headquarters, but by local managers, and therefore class action status is wholly unwarranted.
The EEOC was smarter than the greedy class action attorneys in taking on retail giant Lowes. Forbes.com (Reuters) reports: “Retailer Lowe’s faces discrimination complaint”
Lowe’s . . . has been accused of discriminating against black job seekers by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission . . . .
A lawsuit filed in federal court in Knoxville, Tennessee, charges that the retailer had “a pattern and practice of refusing to hire qualified African American applicants because of their race” at a small distribution center in Vonore, Tennessee, about 35 miles (56 km) south of Knoxville.
The complaint said Lowe’s hired more than 40 people at the distribution center from January 2002 until February 2003, but did not hire any black person. Read more
So the EEOC took the big corporation on at just one of hundreds of locations, focusing on just one issue: hiring. That makes sense.
Hiring discrimination was truly the original evil to which the discrimination laws were directed, but terminations quickly became the commonly litigated issue, with hiring cases relatively rare.
Employers should nevertheless be prepared to defend hiring practices. It’s hard to fight a statistical showing such as that described above if you can’t document the race of your applicants and the reasons you hired some and rejected others.
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