Jury finds discrimination by black DA
Reuters News Service

NEW ORLEANS - The first black district attorney in New Orleans discriminated against dozens of his white employees by firing them on the basis of race, a federal jury decided Wednesday.


Eddie Jordan violated federal anti-discrimination laws when he dismissed 43 of his white employees after taking office in 2003, the jury in U.S. District Court found after a three-week trial.


Jordan argued that he replaced the white support staff with black employees because he had the right to put his own staff in place. He pointed out that no prosecutors were fired and that he retained 56 white assistant district attorneys.


The jury awarded nearly $2 million in damages and back pay to the plaintiffs, but Jordan, who plans to appeal the case, said payment would not be forthcoming.


Jordan succeeded Harry Connick Sr., who served as district attorney for 30 years, after gaining fame when he was U.S. attorney by successfully prosecuting ex-Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards on corruption charges.

It's helpful occasionally to be reminded that we are not bulletproof. It's also useful to remember that, regardless of "at-will" status, those of us who make employment decisions had best have a fairly rational basis for doing so. "Fairly rational," in employment law terms, means something a jury will buy, and usually entails a significant objective element. If you don't think a juror (consider your family members, and remember that most jurors are employees, not employers) will buy a particular explanation, reanalyze your chosen course of action.

Good words, Scott. I'm just curious whether you think it makes any difference if you have only ONE other employee, where one works very cosely with only one other person day in and day out?

Ah, the good old days of the "personal staff" exception to Title VII. If your county has fewer than 15 employees (during all twenty-week periods during the current or previous calendar year), then you don't have to sweat Title VII. But with respect to close confidants in your employ, your personal staff could come after you under the Government Employee Rights Act. It provides an administrative remedy (through your friends, the EEOC) for conduct prohibited by Title VII when the complainant is a personal staff member. The truly safe harbor regarding "right-hand men" probably exists only in the First Amendment patronage context.