08/23/2021
Pitre & Associates, LLC's U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia case featured in Bloomberg Law and Law360.
Labor Department Hit with Race, S*xual Orientation Bias Lawsuit
by: Robert Iafolla
Aug. 19, 2021, 1:25
• TRACK DOCKET: No. 21-cv-02207(Bloomberg Law subscription)
A Black heterosexual federal worker accused the U.S. Labor Department of unlawfully denying him a promotion because of his race and sexual orientation.
Carlton Brown claimed that the department selected a less-qualified White LGBTQ candidate for a team lead position in its civil rights unit. The discriminatory employment decision violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Brown said in his lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The dispute goes back to 2015, when Brown applied to the team lead position for the civil rights unit’s office of external enforcement. He had served as acting team lead following the retirement of the previous office head.
Brown’s supervisor, his supervisor’s executive assistant, and Wesley Garson—the candidate who beat out Brown for the team lead position—are all White and LGBTQ, according to Brown’s filed complaint.
Garson’s resume submitted for the team lead position used the term “LGBT” 11 times and the terms “gay,” “lesbian,” and “transgender” another three times each, Brown alleged.
The supervisor explicitly asked Garson about his transgender status, which Garson stated was inappropriate, Brown claimed. He filed the suit against U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh after going through the department’s internal dispute resolution process.
Brown supports LGBTQ rights, but “not belonging to that community does not warrant unequal treatment,” said his lawyer, Marques Pitre of Pitre & Associates LLC. “We believe those who have fought so hard to obtain equal rights for the LGBTQ community would agree.”
The Labor Department didn’t immediately respond to telephone and emailed requests for comment.
Attorneys: Pitre & Associates LLC represents the plaintiff.
The case is Brown v. Walsh, D.D.C., No. 21-02207, complaint filed 8/18/21.
Worker Accuses DOL Of S*xual Orientation And Race Bias
By Amanda Ottaway · August 19, 2021, 8:15 PM EDT
A straight Black employee with more than two decades of experience at the U.S. Department of Labor has sued the agency, claiming he was passed over for a promotion in favor of a less qualified LGBTQ colleague who is white.
Carlton Brown, a veteran worker at the DOL's Civil Rights Center, filed suit in D.C. federal court Wednesday claiming the agency ran afoul of Title VII's prohibitions against race and sexual orientation discrimination when a white LGBTQ supervisor played favorites when choosing the new lead for a complaint intake team in 2014.
Brown alleged his supervisor Denise Sudell, who was then chief of the Civil Rights Center's Office of External Enforcement, improperly selected a candidate whom Brown said botched an exercise during the interview process.
"Ms. Sudell's rationale ... is seriously flawed, often false, and nothing more than a cover for discriminatory animus to favor a less-qualified Caucasian LGBTQ candidate over a more-qualified African American heterosexual one," said the lawsuit.
Sudell, whom Brown said is white and a member of the LGBTQ community, is not a party to the suit and did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Brown also accused Sudell of having never hired a non-white person and of once calling someone an "angry Black man."
Brown and another colleague, who was not part of the LGBTQ community, both already had experience as acting team lead in the open position when they each applied for the spot full-time. Neither got it. Brown had gotten feedback that he was "highly effective" in the role, his suit said.
The applicant who ended up getting the role hadn't been cleared as qualified by the DOL's human resources department but was ushered ahead for the interview anyway by Sudell's assistant, who is also white and LGBTQ, Brown alleged.
The team lead role involved handling civil rights complaints that came into the agency from, among others, people participating in DOL employment, training and grant programs, according to the suit and the Department of Labor's website.
As part of her evaluation, Sudell had the candidates do an exercise to show how they would handle a new complaint., Brown said. While Brown called the process of accepting or rejecting a new complaint both straightforward and objective, with "no room for interpretation," Sudell improperly evaluated the candidates based on her own opinion, he said.
The winning candidate incorrectly said he would accept the pretend complaint, while Brown said he'd need more information, according to the complaint.
"This firm and my client fully support the rights of the LGBTQ community, however, not belonging to that community does not warrant unequal treatment. We believe those who have fought, and continue to fight, so hard to obtain equal rights for the LGBTQ community would agree," said Brown's attorney A. Marques Pitre of Pitre & Associates LLC in an email Thursday.
Sudell did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
A Department of Labor spokesperson declined to comment.
Brown is represented by A. Marques Pitre of Pitre & Associates LLC.
Counsel information for the Department of Labor was not immediately available.
The case is Carlton Brown v. Martin J. Walsh, Secretary, United States Department of Labor, case number 1:21-cv-02207, in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
--Editing by Haylee Pearl.
