Dismissal Denied In EEOC Race Discrimination Action Against Security Company

Seyfarth Synopsis: A federal district court in Maryland recently denied in part an employer's motion to dismiss a race discrimination action brought on behalf of African-born security guards by the EEOC, and instead granted the EEOC's motion to stay so that the Commission could amend its deficient pre-suit letters of determination that were the subject of the employer's motion to dismiss.

This is an important ruling for employers facing systemic EEOC actions, particularly regarding the strategy to challenge whether the EEOC has satisfied its Title VII pre-suit obligations.

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Case Background

In EEOC v. MVM, Inc., No. 17-CV-2864, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81268 (D. Md. May 14, 2018), the EEOC alleged that MVM subjected a group of African-born employees to national origin discrimination, consisting of disparate treatment, a hostile work environment, and unlawful retaliation. Id. at *1. In October 2013, MVM hired a new project manager to oversee 400 security personnel, approximately half of whom were "African or foreign-born blacks." Id. at *2. Within weeks of his hire, the project manager allegedly began complaining that there were "too many Africans" on the contract, that he was not comfortable working with foreigners, that he "couldn't understand their accents." Id.

During the project manager's tenure, MVM also allegedly engaged in a variety of negative actions against African and foreign-born black security personnel, including denying them leave, forcing them to work on their scheduled days off, forcing them to work extra hours beyond their scheduled shifts, assigning them to undesirable posts, subjecting them to heightened scrutiny, disciplining them more harshly than called for by its discipline policy, intimidating and threatening them with termination, and denying them union representation so as to facilitate the imposition of discipline, suspensions, and termination without cause. Id. at *2-3.

Nine terminated employees filed charges with the EEOC. After the EEOC investigated the Charging Parties' complaints, it issued Letters of Determination ("LODs") on November 3, 2016, finding that there was reasonable cause to believe MVM had violated Title VII by discriminating against the Charging Parties through "unequal, terms, conditions, and privileges of ... employment because of ... national origin," and/or had retaliated against the Charging Parties for engaging in protected activity. Id.

Following unsuccessful conciliation, on September...