Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asked a district court to grant summary judgment to the agency Friday in an enforcement manager’s gender, race and national-origin discrimination lawsuit.
- The manager filed a complaint against EEOC in 2024, alleging she was passed over for a promotion to field director of the agency’s New Orleans field office in favor of a U.S.-born male employee with less experience. The plaintiff is an Asian woman who identified as having Indian national origin.
- In support of its motion, EEOC filed a statement of “uncontested material facts,” including that three members of a four-person interview panel ranked the plaintiff the lowest out of three candidates on a 100-point scale. Meanwhile, each interviewer awarded their highest respective scores to the candidate eventually selected for the role. The agency said that the selecting official followed the panel’s scoring “consistent with his typical practice.”
Dive Insight:
The unusual lawsuit in Kantan v. Burrows claimed that EEOC, itself tasked with enforcing workplace antidiscrimination laws such as Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, discriminated against one of its own employees on the basis of her protected characteristics.
In her complaint, the plaintiff alleged that the staffer eventually selected to lead the New Orleans field office was “groomed and promoted” for the position by the selecting official. She also claimed that the selecting official made statements about the plaintiff’s accent and that this and other conduct signaled that the official was motivated by discrimination.
EEOC’s Aug. 1 filing stated that the candidate who was eventually chosen over the plaintiff consistently scored higher than the plaintiff during the interview process, though one of the interviewers scored the two candidates equally.
“The four interview panelists each recognized that [the plaintiff] had strong technical skills and a lot of experience, but felt that [the hired candidate] demonstrated better leadership skills,” EEOC said. It added that the selecting official made his decision “largely on the interview panelists’ significantly higher scores for [the hired candidate] relative to the other interviewees.”
Kandan is not the first time that EEOC has faced litigation from its own employees. In 2023, it settled one former Black female employee’s lawsuit that the agency paid her less than a White male employee despite both workers completing the same tasks and having the same responsibilities.