30-Year-Old Job Discrimination Lawsuit Settled by USMS

The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) settled a decades-old lawsuit that accused the agency of discriminating against black employees for Deputy U.S. Marshals (DUSM) positions.

Under the settlement, which was recently approved by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), USMS will pay $15 million to the plaintiffs and make changes to the way it hires and promotes employees.

USMS denied any wrongdoing. 

The class action includes more than 700 current and former African American Deputy U.S. Marshals who say they were denied promotions, as well as thousands of African American applicants who were not hired, dating back to 1994 when the case was first filed.

“This agreement is the culmination of more than three decades of hard-fought litigation combating race discrimination and the settlement will provide meaningful relief for African Americans in the Marshals Service and those denied an opportunity to become Marshals,” said David Sanford, Chairman of Sanford Heisler Sharp, the firm that represented the plaintiffs.

Case Twists and Turns

The lawsuit was filed in 1994 and “mistakenly dismissed” in 1997. Sanford Heisler Sharp started representing the plaintiffs in 2004 and got the class action reinstated in 2006. In 2017, the EEOC certified a class that included all African Americans denied promotions at USMS due to discrimination. In 2021, that class was expanded to include all African American job applicants. 

“This is a momentous day for the class,” said Sanford Senior Litigation Counsel James Hannaway. “After decades, we have been able to achieve excellent monetary and programmatic relief.”

The lawsuit accused USMS of numerous discriminatory practices including:

·         Failing to provide effective notice of open positions.

·         Using selective factors to grant promotions to white deputies.

·         Using baseless investigation to exclude African American employees from promotions.

·         Subjecting African American job applicants to different standards than white applicants.

USMS Changes

That programmatic relief includes numerous changes that USMS agreed to make, with the goal of enhancing “equity, objectivity, and transparency in promotion, hiring practices, and headquarters assignments.”

Those changes include providing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) and implicit bias training, changing the recruitment process, implementing a priority consideration program for current employees, and providing decision makers with a list of competencies.