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Walmart's Discrimination Against Women In Warehouse Positions Results In 11.7 Million Dollar Settlement

Walmart will pay $11.7 million dollars in lost wages and compensatory damages -- and will provide other relief including jobs -- to settle a sex discrimination class action lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

According the the EEOC, Walmart's London, Kentucky distribution center hired only men into warehouse positions and excluded women who were equally and better qualified between 1998 and 2005 in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Laws of 1964.

The EEOC alleged that Walmart regularly used gender stereotypes in filling entry level order filler positions which hiring officials at Walmart contended were not suitable for women.

The consent decree settling the case requires Walmart to provide order filler jobs, as they become available, to eligible and interested female class members. A settlement administrator will administer the proceeds of the settlement to all eligible class members.

Walmart also agreed not to discriminate against females in hiring for order filler positions and not to retaliate against applicants who exercise their rights, complain about discrimination, or assist in an investigation of a discrimination related proceeding.

Walmart had sales of $401 billion in 2009 and employs more than 2.1 million individuals worldwide.

Walmart is notorious for illegal employment practices. This case is just another example. Great job by the EEOC in holding Walmart's feet to the fire.

images: willpen.files.wordpress.com/

Recognized as one of the first and foremost employment and civil rights attorneys in the United States, Ellen Simon has been lauded for her work on landmark cases that established employment law in both state and federal court. A sought-after legal analyst and expert, she discusses high-profile civil cases, employment discrimination and woman's issues. Her blog, Employee Rights Post www.employeerightspost.com/ has dedicated readers who turn to Ellen for her advice and opinion. Learn more about Ellen Simon at www.ellensimon.net/.

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EEOC Settlement Shatters Glass Ceiling

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a whopping 19 million dollar settlement of a class action "glass ceiling" lawsuit against Outback Steakhouse last week.

The lawsuit involved a class of female employees who claimed that they were illegally denied:

• equal opportunity for advancement

• promotional opportunities to high level profit sharing management positions
  

• favorable job assignments, particularly, kitchen management experience, which was required for employees to receive consideration for top restaurant management positions

Stuart J. Ishimaru, EEOC Acting Chairman had this to to say in conjunction with the announcement:

There are still too many glass ceilings left to shatter in the workplaces throughout  corporate America. ...

Hopefully this major settlement will remind employers about the perils of perpetuating promotion practices that keep women from advancing at work.

Let's hope so. It's been almost 30 years since the Wall Street Journal popularized the term "glass ceiling" in an article describing the invisible barriers that women confront as they approach the top of corporate hierarchy.

The Federal Glass Ceiling Commission was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and issued several reports between 1991 and 1996. The last report noted that among Fortune 500 companies:

• 95 -97% of senior managers were men

• 97% of male top executives were white

• 95% of the three to five percent of the top managers who were women were white
  

I don' t know how much better the data would look today but my bet would be that the difference wouldn't be significant.  No doubt  ladies -- after all of these years, we still have a long way to go.

I have talked to hundreds of women through the years who confront these issues at work each day. Many just don't want to rock the boat to fight for the promotions they deserve -- and that's understandable.

That's why cases like this one are so important. Three cheers for the courageous women who brought this class action lawsuit and the EEOC's vigorous pursuit of equal opportunity for women.

 image: pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/feminis_difference_lg.jpg 

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Sex Discrimination Against Men Violates Title VII

It’s not often that you see cases involving discrimination against men, but in the last few weeks the EEOC has reported two noteworthy settlements.

The Sex Discrimination Case Against Lawry’s

In early November, the EEOC announced a $1,025,000 settlement of a class action lawsuit against Lawry’s Restaurants Inc., which operates steak houses in Las Vegas, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and Corona del Mar, California. 

In the lawsuit, the EEOC charged Lawry’s with maintaining a longstanding company wide policy of hiring only women for server positions.

The policy, which has been in place since 1938, is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination because of sex.

Lawry’s claimed that the policy was based on long standing tradition. The EEOC found that the policy adversely affected a class of men on the basis of sex.

The parties reached an agreement to settle the case in early November. Under the consent decree Lawry’s agreed to:

• change its practice and actively promote the hiring of men into server positions
  

• provide monetary relief including a class fund of $500,000
  

• pay over $300,000 to initiate an advertising campaign regarding the hiring of food servers
  

• pay $225,000 for training its employees on compliance with Title VII and related laws
  

• take additional steps to insure compliance with Title VII and the decree

In its announcement of the settlement, Olophious E. Perry, who managed the EEOC investigation said:

The EEOC will never condone discrimination in the name of so-called tradition. Every individual deserves a fair chance to obtain a job based on their talent and qualifications, regardless of gender.

It seems to me that there are lots of restaurants out there that still have male only, or female only servers. This case makes it clear that this is one "tradition" that has seen its day.

Cheesecake Factory Settles Case Of Male On Male Sexual Harassment 

The EEOC announced this week that Cheesecake Factory, Inc, a nationwide restaurant chain, will  pay $345,000 to settle a sexual harassment suit involving six male employees who were subjected to repeated sexual harassment at the company’s Chandler Mall location outside of Phoenix.

The complaint charged that the restaurant knew about and tolerated repeated sexual assaults against six male employees by a group of kitchen staffers.

The evidence included abuse involving the harassers:

• directly touching the victims’ genitals
  

• making sexually charged remarks
  

• grinding their genitals against them
  

• forcing victims into repeated episodes of simulated rape

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New ADA Regulations Will Bring Necessary Change

I received a call from a reporter from MSNBC a few days ago. She indicated that she wanted to ask me some questions about the new Americans with Disabilities Act regulations recently put out by the EEOC.

The interview caused me to reflect on just how important the amendments to the ADA are --along with the new regulations --- and the struggle we have gone through to get here.

When the ADA was written, I remember being at a meeting in Cleveland with a group of employment lawyers which was sponsored by a committee of the American Bar Association. The guest speaker was a lawyer from D.C. and he was there to talk to us about the new legislation and give us a preview.

I remember listening to and reading all of these complex, confusing terms and thinking “this is going to result in tons of litigation and be a big nightmare." I walked out of the meeting and talked about my deep concern with some friends and colleagues from both sides of the bar.

We all seemed to reach the same conclusion – that this was going to be an ugly litigation mess -- and though we saw the handwriting on the wall, there was nothing we could do about it. The ADA was written and this is what it was going to say.

And indeed what our group of experienced employment lawyers predicted that day in 1990 turned out to be true. While the intent of the ADA was certainly noble, the way in which it was written has caused nothing but problems.

What’s more important is that the problems with the ADA have had a terrible negative effect on those individuals who were supposed to be protected by the legislation.

The ADA was intended to protect individuals with disabilities from discrimination. Because of the way in which the Act was written, combined with the way in which it has been interpreted by an exceedingly conservative federal judiciary, most cases got thrown out on summary judgment because the courts determined that the individual plaintiff employee was not disabled.

If he/she was not disabled, then he/she was not protected by the ADA from disability discrimination, and so they lost. Here’s an example of what I mean.  

A secretary gets fired for going to chemotherapy. We file a case of disability discrimination. The employer argues that cancer is not a disability as defined by the Act. The judge buys the argument and the case gets thrown out. (based on a true story)

That scenario occurred thousands and thousands of times. Employees with disabilities were getting fired, or not hired in the first place, or passed over for promotions – and the cases were thrown out of court because the employers argued that the person was not disabled so the ADA did not apply.

Those rejected included people with AIDS, people with cancer, people with MS, people with epilepsy, diabetes, with prosthetic devices and the list goes on and on.

As a consequence,  those of us who tried to represent these folks never even got to the stage of the case in which we had a chance to prove discrimination.

As I explained to the MSNBC reporter, in other discrimination lawsuits such as age, race, or gender discrimination cases, we don’t have a fight about whether the client is a woman, or over 40, or black.

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Awareness of Pregnancy Discrimination Law Sets Stage For Punitive Damages

When you litigate a discrimination case, you never know for sure when you’re going to recover punitive damages. For those of us who represent employees, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals -- in the case of  EEOC v. Siouxland Oral Maxillofacial Surgery Assoc., L.L.P. decided last week -- made that job far easier.

What Happened In The Case

The case involves two women and their experiences at Siouxland, a medical clinic in South Dakota specializing in oral and maxillofacial surgery. 

The First Pregnancy Discrimination Victim

Richelle Dooley, was hired in December of 2001 and started work in January 2002. The day after she began, she filled out health benefit forms.

At that time, she told her supervisor that she was pregnant and that her baby was due in July. "Don't worry," the supervisor said, "we can hire a temp. while you're out."

The supervisor told two of the partners including the managing partner, Dr. Harvey Lee Akerson, about Dooley's pregnancy. Akerson decided that Dooley had to be terminated.

According to Kathy Fjellestad, Siouxland's business manager, this is what he said:

[T]he young lady we just hired is going to have a baby this summer. She isn't going to be available to work. It doesn't make any sense to begin training her.. when she won't be able to work the summer ... [W]e are going to have to let her go.

Fjellestad informed Akerson that Siouxland could not terminate Dooley because of her pregnancy. Akerson decided to fire her anyway.

He told Dooley that "her baby was going to be born during our busy season" and if they had known she was pregnant they would not have hired her.'"

The Second Pregnancy Discrimination Victim

In March of 2002, Angie Gacke interviewed for a position at Siouxland. During the interview she told the interviewers : "I don't know if this is going to be a problem or not, but I'm four months pregnant."

Shererena Kost, supervisor of  Siouxlands's surgical staff said:

Yes, it's a problem. Your are just going to end up causing more work for everybody else than you will be helping them.

One of the other interviewers recalled Kost saying:

Because of her pregnancy occurring at the time it was going to be occurring, that it would be best if she just continue her pregnancy, have the baby, have her maternity leave, and then we would talk.

Kost wrote on her resume that she was:

• overqualified for job
  
• needed insurance
  
• "4 months pregnant!"

Kost informed Gacke later that day that she did not get the job. As set forth in the opinion:

Kost was aware throughout this process that discriminating on the basis of pregnancy was illegal.

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Age Discrimination Claimed For Failure to Rehire Former Employees

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) had hearings last month on recent and alarming developments in age discrimination including the effect on older workers of widespread layoffs, threats to employee benefits, and controversial recent court decisions.

In keeping with its commitment to aggressively enforce the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) the Commission announced on Thursday that it filed an age discrimination lawsuit against AT&T and a number of its subsidiaries.

A successful outcome, which is no doubt years away, would be a huge victory for older workers.

About The Case

AT&T, like many companies, offered various retirement incentive programs over the last few years, in order to reduce its workforce. In those types of programs, employees who meet the qualifications (usually a combination of age and years of service) are offered enhanced severance packages if they voluntarily leave the company.

Some of those employees later applied for openings at the company, but were not hired because they had previously participated in the program.

Since October of 2006, AT&T has maintained a policy which prohibited hiring employees who retired under these plans.

The suit maintains the AT&T’s no-hire policies have a disparate impact on employees and applicants for employment who are age 40 and over in violation of the ADEA.

The suit further maintains that AT&T has no legitimate reason or purpose for this policy.

Disparate Impact Lawsuits

Generally speaking, there are two types of employment discrimination cases involving protected classes (age, race, gender, national origin, religion, disability, veteran status) of individuals.

1. Disparate treatment cases:

• involve proof that an individual was treated differently/discriminated against because of his/her protected characteristic

• requires proof (with either direct or circumstantial evidence) of intentional discrimination

2. Disparate impact cases :

• involve the company’s use of a neutral policy which adversely/more harshly affects a protected group

• proof of intentional discrimination is not required

• the plaintiff need only prove that the policy, while neutral on it’s face, has a disparate impact on a protected group when applied to current or prospective employees

• employer must prove a legitimate business reason (a reasonable factor other than age) for the discriminatory policy

Disparate impact litigation was widely used in the 1970’s to combat race discrimination, particularly in the South. It has also been used to challenge various policies and practices which have adversely affected women in the workplace.

It wasn’t until fairly recently that the Supreme Court recognized the use of a disparate impact analysis as a way to prove age discrimination.

Therefore, there are very few cases on this topic, and none that I know of which has challenged a company’s policy of not hiring former  employees who accepted severance packages, voluntarily retired, and then later applied for open positions.

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There's been quite a bit in the news recently about anti-Latino discrimination.

In one EEOC case out of Miami, Nordstrom agreed to a settlement of $292,500 because of a store manager's blatant prejudice.

The manager was heard to say  that she  "hated Hispanics" and that Hispanics were "lazy and ignorant."  Hispanic workers were also chastised for speaking to each other in Spanish.

The same store manager didn't like African American employees either and was known to make remarks like "I don't like Blacks" and "you're Black, you stink".

According to the EEOC:  

The employees complained to Nordstrom about the harassment, but the harassment did not stop. The . . . manager retaliated against those who complained by continuing the racially offensive comments, unfairly berating employees and citing them for alleged performance problems.

In a different  EEOC case out of Los Angeles, Skilled Healthcare Group agreed to pay $450,000 to a class of Hispanic employees who were subjected to harassment and discrimination at its nursing homes and assisted living facilities in California and Texas.

In that case, the EEOC alleged that workers were

• prohibited from speaking Spanish to Spanish speaking residents

• disciplined for speaking Spanish n the parking lot while on breaks

• given less desirable work than non-Hispanic counterparts paid less and promoted less often
  

In other news, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued an alarming report about anti-Latino discrimination in the South

The report — Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South — details the experiences of Latino immigrants who face increasing hostility as they fill low-wage jobs in Southern states that had few Latino residents until recent years.

According to the report, Latino workers are:

• subjected to widespread hostility, discrimination and exploitation.
• consistently cheated out of their pay
• 80% more likely to die on the job than native-born workers

The discrimination against Latina women in the workplace was particularly disturbing.. For example, 77% of the Hispanic women interviewed said sexual harassment was a major workplace problem.

 A recurring theme is the male supervisor using immigration status as leverage to coerce sexual favors from female employees. These women often have little or no idea about sexual harassment laws and have nowhere to turn.

Sadly, for a variety of reasons discussed in the report including language barriers and legal status, most victims do not seek legal recourse even though Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sexual harassment as well as race and national origin discrimination regardless of immigration status according to most courts.

 With all of these recent stories about discrimination targeted against Latinos,  it's good news that President Obama is strongly considering a Hispanic woman for Supreme Court Justice.

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Did you know that:

• 90.7 % of families with children under 18 have at least one working parent

• 1 in 10 workers cares for both children and an elderly relative 
  

It's well documented that most of that burden falls on women who continue to serve as the primary caregivers for children and sick or disabled relatives.

The result is that because of these responsibilities, women have suffered widespread discrimination in employment for as long as they have been working.

That's why it was really good news last week when the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)  issued a document on best practices to avoid discrimination against workers with caregiving responsibilities.

The Work Life Law Center at UC  Hastings College of the Law  describes "caregivers discrimination"  this way:

Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD) is employment discrimination against workers based on their family caregiving responsibilities. Pregnant women, mothers and fathers of young children, and employees with aging parents or sick spouses or partners may encounter FRD.

They may be rejected for hire, passed over for promotion, demoted, harassed, or terminated -- despite good performance -- simply because their employers make personnel decisions based on stereotypical notions of how they will or should act given their family responsibilities.

The purpose of the new EEOC  document is to educate employers about what caregiver discrimination is, how it is manifested, and how it can be minimized or avoided. It also illuminates the not-so-obvious fact that men are victims too.

The report includes some good examples of flexible workplace policies and their proven benefit to both employees and employers.  Sue Shellenbarger's Wall Street Journal article on some of those programs is referenced in the report and is an interesting read.

The EEOC report also includes helpful examples of what this kind of discrimination looks like and here are a few:

Common unlawful stereotypes

• assuming that female workers who work part-time or take advantage of flexible work arrangements are less committed to their jobs than full-time employees

• assuming that male workers do not, or should not, have significant caregiving responsibilities

• assuming that female workers prefer, or should prefer, to spend time with their families rather than time at work

•  assuming that female workers who are caregivers are less capable than other workers

•  assuming that pregnant workers are less reliable than other workers. 

 Unlawful conduct that results from the bias

• asking female applicants and employees, but not male applicants and employees, about their child care responsibilities

• making stereotypical comments about pregnant workers or female caregivers

• treating female workers without caregiving responsibilities more favorably than female caregivers

• steering women with caregiving responsibilities to less prestigious or lower-paid positions;

• denying male workers’, but not female workers’, requests for leave related to caregiving responsibilities

Just to be clear, while caregiver discrimination has not been around as a legal concept for very long, it is not just theoretical.   Here's an example of some of the cases where caregiver discrimination has appeared:

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The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in Ricci v. DeStefano a case which many are saying is one which may fundamentally change civil rights protection in the workplace.

As noted by Lia Epperson, a law professor at Santa Clara University: 

This is the Roberts court's first major decision on the issue of racial discrimination.

In the world of civil rights law, it doesn't get much more important than this.

When cases get to the United States Supreme Court, they are generally complex and this one is no different. Discrimination cases particularly,  in terms of the law, are never really very easy to explain but here's a try.

In order to understand the case at all, it's important to know the difference between the two kinds of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

disparate treatment discrimination

• where a person is being treated differently --  because of his/her race, sex, religion, national origin, disability, veteran status or age -- than a person who is not in the protected class

•  proven with direct or circumstantial evidence of an intent to discriminate

 disparate impact discrimination

• when a neutral policy, standard or test has a disparate impact on a protected class.

• i.e. if a company only hires individuals who are 5 foot 6 inches tall or over -- the qualification while neutral on its face, would have a disparate impact on women.

• no intent to discriminate is required to prove these kinds of cases

These two types of discrimination are implicated  in this case and come together like a perfect storm for the Court. Here's what happened .

In 2003, the New Haven Fire Department was filling captain and lieutenant positions.  The union contract required promotions to be based on examinations,  The city contracted with a company to develop the exams which were given to qualified applicants.

Under the city's rules, once the test results were certified, the department was required to promote those individuals with the top three scores. It turned out that the Black applicants' pass rate on the exam was approximately half of the rate for white applicants which was not the case on prior exams.

The city was concerned that the exam was flawed.  City officials believed that if the results were certified, the city could be subject to a disparate impact discrimination lawsuit from the minority applicants who did not qualify for the promotions.

New Haven is a city where 37 percent of residents are African-American, 21 percent are Hispanic, and only 15 percent of the fire department's officers are minorities.

A group of white firefighters, and one Hispanic,  (the petitioners) who scored the highest on the test filed a disparate treatment discrimination lawsuit claiming that they were being adversely treated because of their race --- what is commonly called a "reverse discrimination" case.

The main question before the Supreme Court is:  Under what circumstances can a plaintiff prove a disparate-treatment case when the employer's justification for it's decision is that it acted to comply with Title VII's disparate-impact provisions?

New Haven's counsel pointed out the dilemna  as reported in The Washington Post:

 The city was placed in a position where it was bound to be sued by one side or the other and opted to "pause" and reconsider how promotions should be made

He added that if it is unfair to white firefighters to have the promotions scuttled, it would be equally unfair to black firefighters who were "locked out" by test results that did not truly produce a list of those most qualified.

"I certainly have sympathy for the plaintiffs, but at the end of the day it was the wrong test," Bolden said

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There was an interesting piece by Catherine Moreton Gray which reported Peggy Mastroianni's (associate legal counsel for the EEOC)  talk at the Society for Human Resource Managers Employment Law and Legislative Conference  in Washington last week. In that discussion, Mastroianni outlined the Commission's top priorities for 2009.

Here's what she listed:  

Enforcement of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: The EEOC will look closely at complaints it dismissed since May 27, 2007, the effective date of the Act to see if reinstatement is appropriate.  She said that the agency did not expect a surge in wage claims as a result of the new law.  It will be interesting to see if her prediction is correct.

GINA:  I wrote a post about the Genetic Information Non Discrimination Act in February.  In short, GINA prohibits the use of  genetic tests concerning an employee's own or family's medical history to make an employment decision.The EEOC is in the process of formulating regulations for enforcement of the Act.  There will be more to come about this law once the regulations are published.

ADA Amendments Act (ADAA):  The EEOC is working on proposed regulations for the ADAA. The big change of course is that the definition of the term disability will be construed broadly so that more people will be covered by the Act consistent with the Act's original intent. Mitigating measures, such as medications or prosthetic devices, can't be considered for purposes of determining whether a person is disabled.

I attended a Society for Human Resource Management Conference a couple of months ago.  The panel of management lawyers from the large firms all agreed on the advice to the HR manager attendees:  "treat everyone as disabled and accommodate." 

This is a good thing and it's about time.  According to Gray's article, one of  Mastroianni's remarks about the new amendments:  "employer's doing the reasonable thing won't have to make any changes."  We'll see.

Religious Discrimination:  I thought this discussion was  very interesting,  Three areas mentioned were:

1. Scheduling cases: While an employer is not required to make other employees swap shifts to accommodate scheduling around religious observances, they can't interfere with employees switching on a volunteer basis
2. Muslim prayer breaks:  Observant Muslims are required to pray five times a day. Employers may need to stagger breaks to accommodate this request so long as it does not pose an undue hardship on the business. This apparently has been a problem.
3. Modifying duties: If pharmacists do not want to fill prescriptions for contraceptives on religious grounds, the employer may  have to accommodate and pass the prescription on to another pharmacist. Again, this is a story we have heard about, and it's good to see that the EEOC is tackling it.

We'll be talking more about these topics as the regulations and new cases get reported.

Image: www.theaccidentalitleader.com

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There have been a number of good articles this week which reported the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's news that discrimination charges are on the rise. including the Workplace Prof Blog  the Connecticut Employment Law Blog,and The Wall Street Journal. There's also some debate as what these new statistics mean.

These are the statistics:

• Overall discrimination charges are at a record high up 15%
• Age discrimination charges are at a record high up 29%                               
• Sex discrimination charges are up 14%                                                
• Religious discrimination charges are up 14%
• National Origin discrimination charges are up 13%
• Race discrimination charges are up 11%
• Disability discrimination charges are up 10%

I think it's pretty obvious that discrimination is going to occur in a time of economic distress.  When managers are given the opportunity to let people go, it is an opportunity to discriminate for:

• younger managers who don't like or who are uncomfortable with the "old timers" and replace them with younger cheaper workers
• men who think women should be at home instead of work
• whites who don't like blacks and other minorities

I wrote about this topic last  week in an article about the hidden dangers of workforce reductions.  My opinion comes from thirty years of representing employees in discrimination claims and both proving and winning those cases.

Not surprisingly, those who represent managers have a different perspective. I just read an article on Job-Bias Claims Soaring  to Record Highs in 2008 which quoted a management lawyer with one of the top firms in the country.  His opinion was that there really is very little discrimination and that people are just looking for money:

Someone who has lost his job is in a very tough situation and may be looking for a number of avenues where he can replace revenue, said Gerald Hathaway, and employment lawyer with Littler Mendelson in New York.  But true victims of discrimination are rare.  Most commonly, someone files a claim thinking he's a victim of discrimination, but is not.

I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with a very well regarded insurance executive who handles discrimination claims nationwide and she sincerely expressed a similar view.

Obviously, there is a real difference of opinion.

Those of us who represent employees and have done so over time have seen the patterns of a spike in discrimination claims when downsizing takes place.  We have scrutinized the documentation, explanations, and business justifications for the decisions that have been made.  Often times the objective support for the termination decision simply does not exist.  In other cases we find that the particular manager has a history of racist, ageist, or sexist remarks, or that other minorities, women, or older workers were selected in disproportionate numbers by the same manager or management group.

Certainly there are some employees who believe that they were discriminated against when they were not.  Many do not understand what the term means or how discrimination is proven.   Many believe that they were treated unfairly, and perhaps they were, but an unfair decision is not necessarily a discriminatory one.  There is no doubt that some of the charges filed with the EEOC have no merit.

On the other hand, there is real discrimination that takes place in the workplace.  If these prejudices did not exist, there would be no need for civil rights laws to protect these groups.  These claims do rise in times of economic distress when people are being singled out for termination or layoff.The news from the EEOC this week is no surprise.

Certainly everyone is entitled to their opinion. But it seems to me the belief that little discrimination occurs, or that most of the claims have no merit, or that people are just looking for money  is a belief that may not fully appreciate the real prejudice which still exists and is patently manifested in  times of economic distress.  

Image: eeopreventionorpenalty.com

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