Discrimination Lawsuits Research Articles

Title VII Sex and Race Discrimination Litigation Settlements as Opportunities for Organizational Change

This study investigated how frequently and under what circumstances Title VII lawsuit settlements resulted in mandates for substantive organizational change in HR policies and practices that, according to social science research, are likely to move beyond mere pro forma compliance to foster greater inclusion and equality. 502 consent decrees settling Title VII sex and race discrimination lawsuits in 200–2008 were collected, coded, and analyzed. Multinomial logistic regression was used. Sociological theories of organizational change and of the relationship between law and organizations informed the study. 48 % of the consent decrees examined specified no meaningful substantive changes; 31 % required formalization of personnel decision-making remedies; 21 % required more innovative measures. Certified class actions, other non-individual lawsuits, lawsuits filed in more liberal Federal District Courts, and public sector employer predicted more substantive remedies for organizational change in organizations’ EEO policies and practices, all else being equal. Single plaintiffs and a conservative District Court legal environment predicted a greater likelihood of pro forma only remedies. Discrimination lawsuit settlements are a potential impetus for improved diversity management policies. Consent decrees are an unusually direct and potentially powerful mechanism under Title VII for employment discrimination lawsuits to mandate substantive organizational change. Whereas a few studies have discussed a very small number of high-profile settlements, this is the first systematic examination of the programmatic mandates in consent decrees and how they vary.

Addressing Discrimination against Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians: Testimony before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Our nation has a unique, long-cherished commitment to religious freedom. Indeed, the first wave of immigrants came seeking refuge from religious persecution in Europe. The free exercise of religion, regardless of one’s religious beliefs, is a fundamental right guaranteed to all Americans and embodied in the First Amendment to our Constitution. As a result, America has become a diverse nation enriched by its multiple religious communities that practice their faiths freely and peacefully. America’s unique cultural tolerance for religious diversity is due in large part to the enforcement of constitutional rights and statutory laws that protect individuals and congregations from discrimination in public accommodations, education, and employment.While most people in America voluntarily comply with anti-discrimination laws based on a personal commitment to equality and justice for all, religious bigotry exists in American society. One need only review the increasing number of lawsuits filed by the EEOC over the past ten years. In 1997, religious discrimination lawsuits made up only 2.1% of the EEOC’s docket. By 2010, the rate of discrimination lawsuits increased significantly to 3.8%. Similarly, religious discrimination charges filed with the EEOC increased dramatically by 35% from 2001 to 2008. A disproportionate number of religious discrimination charges were filed by employees who wear headscarves, turbans, or beards for religious reasons because these practices carry a stigma that falsely stereotype them as terrorist, disloyal, or suspect.In the years immediately following the tragic September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there was an upsurge in hatred, violence, and discrimination against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians. Despite the passage of more than ten years, pervasive discrimination persists due to a variety of factors that directly impact the workplace. For example, media images stereotyping, darkskinned, bearded males with Arabic-sounding names as representing the primary threat to the national security of the United States contribute to racial, national origin, and religious harassment in the workplace. Government selective counter-terrorism practices and policies have institutionalized a policy of discrimination against persons perceived to be Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern, or South Asian on the basis of their name, race, religion, ethnicity, and national origin. The government’s disparate treatment of these communities, based on the pretext of national security, legitimizes workplace harassment. The result is a conflation of the racial Arab or South Asian with the religious category of Muslim coupled with the misperception that Islam is a radical and violent religion. Therefore, efforts aimed at combatting post-9/11 religious discrimination must adopt a holistic approach that rectifies the “bias legitimizing” actions of other government agencies.Accordingly, my recommendations are as follow:1. Adopt creative legal theories of liability and use case briefs to educate judges about post-9/11 religious discrimination;2. Train federal agencies about the adverse workplace consequences of selective law enforcement and immigration enforcement;3. Train private sector employers about the rise in religious discrimination and how to proactively prevent it;4. Normalize images of religious minorities in government publications; and5. Diversify points of contact in outreach to religious communities about their legal rights and remedies.

The Role of Identification in Giving Sense to Unethical Organizational Behavior

This language production experiment investigates communication’s role in defending, and therefore giving sense to, organizational wrongdoing. The study suggests identification may possibly reduce organizations’ moral learning capacity by encouraging highly identified members to engage in ethical sensegiving of their organizations’ wrongdoing in defensive ways. Working adults ( N = 318) responded to an organizational outsider regarding a gender discrimination lawsuit filed against their organization in one of two scenarios, which presented the organization’s guilt as either ambiguous or certain. Highly identified members used more linguistic defense mechanisms and reported more intense feelings. Additionally, participants in the ambiguous condition used more linguistic defense mechanisms than those in the certain condition. Veteran members reported higher levels of organizational identification and used more linguistic defense mechanisms than newcomers.

Board Diversity as a Camouflage Signal

Previous research on board diversity suggests that diverse boards can signal quality of the firm to the public, influencing firm reputation and legitimacy. However, signals vary in nature, with different characteristics based on intent and need. We propose that board diversity may be used as a “camouflage signal” to disguise potential liability and divert attention away from underlying social issues in an organization. In a longitudinal analysis of 103 firms from 2003-2006, we find that firms with a gender discrimination lawsuit are more likely to appoint female members to their boards over the next two-year time period, suggesting the use of camouflage signaling in board appointments for gender issues. However, we did not find support for our prediction for firms facing racial discrimination suits. Instead, we found the opposite. The coefficient estimate on multiple race discrimination lawsuits is negative and statistically significant (p<.05). Firms with a history of multiple racial discrimination suits subsequently had fewer minorities on the board. Thus, firms with a history of racial discrimination lawsuits not only fail to appoint new minority BOD members, but they also end up losing minority members. Overall, our findings suggest that camouflage signaling through board composition changes is used selectively, where there is a lower risk of negative feedback and the perception of false signals. Our findings provide insight into both signaling theory and antecedents to board diversity.

Drafting and Implementing an Effective Social Media Policy

Social media is everywhere and used in many business and personal situations. There is no indication that social media use is declining; rather, social media use is constantly expanding into new realms and taking on new forms. Social media launches political campaigns, international pop stars, and new businesses to heightened levels of success or failure with just a few mouse clicks. Because social media information has the ability to spread rapidly, not addressing social media or hoping it will not affect the employer's business is a dangerous practice. Currently, few employers have a Social Media Policy ("Policy"). By not having a Policy, the employer and its business are left vulnerable to the whims of its employees' social media actions and cannot guide employees toward using social media to protect and further the employer's business purpose. A Policy's existence makes the employer proactive rather than reactive. Further, establishing a Policy provides employees with clear expectations about when social media can be used, for what purposes, and what level of privacy an employee should expect regarding personal use. Finally, the employer needs a Policy to promote consistent enforcement among all employees. Inconsistent actions by supervisors for similar employee actions could open the employer up to potential employment discrimination lawsuits. Once the employer understands that it needs a Policy, the next step is deciding what type to implement. The employer must create a Policy that furthers the employer's business purposes. Regardless of whether the employer decides to ban social media or freely allow its use, the employer should always spell it out in a Policy that defines the parameters of social media use. However, before the employer establishes a Policy it should conduct a cost-benefit analysis of social media uses and benefits for the employer versus the cost and resources required to enforce such a Policy. The employer should consider the Policy's monitoring and enforcement costs and the employee productivity costs depending on the level of allowed social media use. Taking into account these considerations, this Article will instruct an employer or employer's counsel on how to best draft an effective Policy that will meet all of the employer's objectives.

The Missing Quadrants of Antidiscrimination: Going Beyond the “Prejudice Polygraph”

Behavioral realists urge the law to respond to new scientific discoveries about the reality of contemporary discrimination. But in thinking about how the law might respond, it is easy to frame the question as: When should evidence from scientific instruments, such as the Implicit Association Test, be admissible in a discrimination lawsuit. In other words, should we admit into evidence the results of some “Prejudice Polygraph”? But this framing, which focuses on specific facts, found ex post is too narrow and obscures a much broader range of potential legal responses. Indeed, by considering both specific and general facts, as well as both ex post and ex ante time orientations, four separate quadrants of analysis emerge. Psychologists, legal scholars, and policymakers should not miss these other quadrants of antidiscrimination.

Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation

A substantial body of sociolegal scholarship suggests that the legitimacy of the law crucially depends on the public's perception that legal processes are fair. The bulk of this research relies on an underdeveloped account of the material and institutional contexts of litigants' perceptions of fairness. We introduce an analysis of situated justice to capture a contextualized conception of how litigants narrate fairness in their actual legal encounters. Our analysis draws on 100 in-depth interviews with defendant's representatives, plaintiffs, and lawyers involved in employment discrimination lawsuits, selected as part of a multimethod study of 1,788 discrimination cases filed in U.S. district courts between 1988 and 2003. This article offers two key empirical findings, the first at the level of individual perceptions and the second at the level of legal institutions. First, we find that neither defendants' representatives nor plaintiffs believe discrimination law is fair. Rather than sharing a complaint, however, each side sees unfairness only in those aspects of the process that work to their disadvantage. Second, we demonstrate that the very notion of fairness can belie structural asymmetries that, overall, profoundly benefit employers in employment discrimination lawsuits. We conclude by discussing how a situated justice analysis calls for a rethinking of empirical research on fairness. Audio recordings of respondents quoted in this article are available online.*

Moving to Integration? The Origins of Chicago’s Gautreaux Program and the Limits of Voucher-Based Housing Mobility

This article explores the origins and implementation of Chicago’s Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, which used federal vouchers to move poor African American families to majority-white neighborhoods in the Chicago suburbs between 1976 and 1997. The program grew out of discrimination lawsuits by public housing tenants against the Chicago Housing Authority and Department of Housing and Urban Development. The plaintiffs originally sought the construction of new suburban public housing, but changes in federal policy, including the creation of vouchers, and shifts in civil rights jurisprudence confined them to the use of privately owned, existing housing. As a result, the remedy for state-sponsored segregation sent poor black families into a historically segregated housing market that remained largely unaltered by civil rights legislation. In addition, the program’s use of tenant screening and counseling services transformed the litigation from an attempt to reorganize metropolitan housing markets into a program of uplift and racial pioneering in white neighborhoods. This article underscores the ways in which market-based solutions, and the unspoken resistance to integration they sometimes fostered, are important to understanding not only the fate of the Gautreaux program but also the obstacles to civil rights litigation and suburban integration that emerged in the 1970s and beyond.

Employment discrimination and Muslims in the USA

Fears of terrorism and radical extremists have engendered increased discrimination and harassment in the US workplace against Muslim employees. The principal purpose of this paper is to examine civil rights law in the USA as applied to the religious discrimination and harassment of Muslim and Arab-American employees. The paper provides an overview of the US discrimination laws and discusses the nature and role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in implementing and enforcing discrimination law. Detailed recommendations are supplied to managers on how to deal with civil rights laws generally and the prohibitions against religious harassment and discrimination specifically. Recommendations are also provided on how to deal with and to defend discrimination lawsuits.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: A Note on Employment Discrimination Lawsuits in China

China’s legal system continues to struggle with the political and social complications of its rapid economic development. One of the more glaring tensions in the New China is the treatment of workers in a capitalist economy nested within a socialist political system. Curb Your Enthusiasm: A Note on Employment Discrimination Lawsuits in China is an article in a series of papers I am writing on the issue of employment discrimination in China. Research on employment discrimination is quite a recent thing in China, yet as early as in 2002, I was involved in several high-profile anti-discrimination cases and served as a legal counsel for plaintiff in one of them. I was also a participant in the initial employment discrimination research program in west China directed by Professor Zhou Wei of Sichuan University law school. The development in Chinese employment discrimination law excited many people. However, people might be easily misled by a few high-profile discrimination cases and the burgeoning scholarly interests on anti-discrimination into believing that employment discrimination issue is being very seriously and effectively dealt with through Chinese legal system. In fact, as my previous paper Employment Discrimination in China: Current Situations and Principle Challenges (Hamline Law Review, Volume 32 Winter 2009) as well as this paper has noted that even now employment discrimination is still prevalent in China. Despite continued employment discrimination in the Chinese workplace, few discrimination cases coming to Chinese courts. In this article, based on a survey administrated to judges from different courts in China, I argue that in spite of the enthusiastic anti-discrimination movement in China and despite the record setting volume of laws and regulations prohibiting employment discrimination, employment discrimination litigation remains unpopular and politically sensitive in China.

Ambivalence &amp; Activism: Employment Discrimination in China

Chinese courts do not vigorously enforce many human rights, but a recent string of employment discrimination lawsuits suggests that, given the appropriate conditions, advocacy strategies, signals from above, and rights at issue, courts can help victims vindicate their constitutional and statutory rights to equality. Since 2008, carriers of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) have used the Employment Promotion Law to challenge hiring discrimination. Their high success rate suggests official support for making one potent form of discrimination illegal. Central to these lawsuits is a broad network of lawyers, activists and scholars who have advocated for protecting the rights of HBV carriers, suggesting a limited role for civil society actors in the field of law and policy.

Individual Justice or Collective Legal Mobilization? Employment Discrimination Litigation in the Post Civil Rights United States

This article analyzes the outcomes of employment discrimination lawsuits filed in federal court from 1988 to 2003. It goes beyond previous research by examining case filings rather than published opinions and by treating case outcome as a sequential variable. Our analysis is informed by four theoretical models: formal legal, rational action/economic, legal mobilization, and critical realist. We employ a discrete‐time event‐history model with random effects to estimate whether a case will end at a particular stage. We find that employment discrimination litigation consists overwhelmingly of individual cases, a majority of which end in a small settlement. The outcomes of cases are difficult to predict at the outset of litigation. Legal representation and collective legal mobilization have powerful effects on outcome, but collective legal mobilization is rare. These results are most consistent with the critical realist perspective. Our analysis suggests that employment discrimination litigation maintains law's jurisdiction over claims of workplace discrimination while not providing a significant remedy or an authoritative resolution in most cases.

I’m not sexist!!! Cognitive dissonance and the differing cries of mixed- and strong-handers

Previous research shows that mixed-handers more readily update their beliefs than strong-handers. A direct consequence of this updating is that one might overreact when facing two contradictory beliefs (e.g. a non-sexist person is labeled sexist), thus exhibiting more cognitive dissonance. To test this, 114 undergraduates completed a personality test that generated fake attribute scores. Scores were identical for all participants except for level of sexism. Some were told they were low, while others were told they were high on sexism. Participants were then given an unrelated task requiring them to adjudicate a sexual discrimination lawsuit wherein a woman had been passed over for a man in a university hiring decision. Results indicated that, as predicted, mixed-handers showed larger differences across sexism conditions than strong-handers, and were the only group when labeled sexist to view the university as less justified in their hiring decision, the woman as more justified for bringing the lawsuit, and the woman as more deserving of a larger award. Strong-handers either showed no effect or the opposite effect across the three dependent variables. A theory centered around interhemispheric interaction and one’s (in)ability to maintain incongruent cognitive representations are used to account for these data.

Legal-Political Pressures and African American Access to Managerial Jobs

Prior work on equal employment opportunity tends to focus on a limited set of factors that influence change in organizational structures and policies. This article considers a broader set of potentially influential legal and political coercive pressures—namely, discrimination lawsuits, federal court dynamics, and state political ideology—and analyzes their implications for concrete changes in organizational behavior. Using national establishment-level data on the supermarket industry from 1983 to 1998, I estimate African American managerial representation using a series of auto-distributed lag (ADL) models with fixed-effects. The results show that in the year following a lawsuit filing against a particular supermarket establishment, African Americans are more likely to enter management. Furthermore, over the long run, coercive isomorphism (whereby establishments subject to a lawsuit come to adopt industry averages for African American managerial representation) seems to prevail. Finally, legal pressures associated with federal court judges' gender and racial/ethnic diversity and state-level government ideology are also influential. I conclude by discussing these results and the importance of systematically incorporating political process into sociological theorizing and analyses of workplace diversity.

Beyond Gender and Negotiation to Gendered Negotiations

Negotiation and Conflict Management ResearchVolume 2, Issue 1 p. 1-16 Beyond Gender and Negotiation to Gendered Negotiations Deborah Kolb, Deborah Kolb School of Management, Simmons College, Boston, MA, U.S.A.Search for more papers by this authorKathleen McGinn, Kathleen McGinn Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, U.S.A.Search for more papers by this author Deborah Kolb, Deborah Kolb School of Management, Simmons College, Boston, MA, U.S.A.Search for more papers by this authorKathleen McGinn, Kathleen McGinn Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, U.S.A.Search for more papers by this author First published: 19 January 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-4716.2008.00024.xCitations: 36Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume2, Issue1February 2009Pages 1-16 RelatedInformation

(e)Racing Jennifer Harris

In 2007 Penn State basketball coach Rene Portland retired shortly after a confidential settlement ended a discrimination lawsuit brought by former player Jennifer Harris against Portland and Penn State. Because of Portland's infamous policy of not allowing lesbians on her team, her departure was celebrated as a victory against homophobia in sports. Yet although Harris's claims of sexual orientation discrimination were validated in the media, her allegations of racial discrimination were ignored or dismissed as implausible. In this article, we examine the omission of race from the discourse surrounding this case and suggest that both legal and cultural factors contribute to society's tendency to ignore the intersecting discrimination in sport and the multiplicity of identity.

Does Temporary Affirmative Action Produce Persistent Effects? A Study of Black and Female Employment in Law Enforcement

Abstract This paper exploits variation in the timing and outcomes of employment discrimination lawsuits against U.S. law enforcement agencies to estimate the cumulative and persistent employment effects of temporary externally imposed affirmative action (AA). We find that AA increased black employment at all ranks by 4.5 to 6.2 percentage points relative to national trends. We also find no erosion of these employment gains in the fifteen years following AA termination, although black employment growth was significantly lower in departments after AA ended than in departments whose plans continued. For women, in contrast, we find only marginal employment gains at lower ranks.

Beyond Gender and Negotiation to Gendered Negotiations

Deborah Kolb Kathleen McGinn Simmons College Harvard University Morgan Stanley has been hit, yet again, with a gender discrimination lawsuit. […] The suit comes two years after former Morgan broker Allison Schieffelin was awarded $12 million in her sexual discrimination suit against the firm. […] According to this latest complaint, […] “Morgan Stanley has engaged in a pattern and practice of gender discrimination with respect to compensation and promoting females.” Specifically, the women contend that Morgan discriminated against female advisers in terms of training, mentoring, assignment of accounts, participation in company-approved partnership arrangements with male advisers, promotions to branch manager positions and assignment of office space and sales support staff.

Producing Change or Bagging Opportunity? The Effects of Discrimination Litigation on Women in Supermarket Management

Despite women’s advancement in the workplace over the past 40 years, their representation in top‐level positions remains disproportionately low relative to that of men. This raises the question of what factors drive greater gender equality in managerial ranks. Using national equal employment opportunity (EEO‐1) data for the supermarket industry, this article proposes that high‐profile sex discrimination lawsuit filings provide the type of intense pressure that leads to increased female managerial representation. Results from fixed‐effects models demonstrate the significance of litigation in the short and long run, especially for women employed by supermarkets located in the most progressive U.S. appellate court jurisdictions. The findings also provide support for a normative effect on change based on regional variation in public orientation toward gender equality.

Sex Discrimination Lawsuits in Law Enforcement

This case study offers a detailed description of the experiences of 13 women who sued their law enforcement agencies for sexual harassment or another form of sex discrimination, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. These women experienced a wide range of negative workplace behaviors with deleterious impact on their psychological, physical, and professional well-being. Outcomes were worse for those experiencing more serious and/or frequent types of mistreatment. When the women reported the behaviors, they experienced myriad forms of retaliation. Only 5 of the 13 women stated that changes were implemented in their agencies as a result of their lawsuit. As a result, they exhibited considerable ambivalence when offering advice to women who are currently considering such a lawsuit. Nonetheless, most of the women (8 of 13) stated that they were personally glad that they had done so.