Jones v. Bernanke, D.C. Cir,. No. 08-5092, Decided 3/6/ 2009
Michael G. Kane argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was David R. Cashdan. On March 6, 2009, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of our client Charles Blaine Jones that a federal trial court erred when it ruled in favor of the Board of the of the Federal Reserve System on its summary judgment motion. Click on Court and Agency Opinions for more details.
David Cashdan - "Developing your Case" , The National Employment Lawyers Association seminar, "Beyond Stereotypes: Discovering and Proving Hidden Bias in Employment Cases," Washington, DC, October 13-14, 2006.
Newspaper Articles:
EEOC Sets Course for New Year
LawyersUSA, December 18, 2006 by Reni Gertner
With a new chair in office and a new general counsel recently taking the helm, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is getting ready for a busy year ahead.
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The EEOC's litigation efforts are centered on a major new "systemic initiative."
Both Earp and the agency's new general counsel Ronald Cooper have voiced their support for the initiative.
The focus will be on major class action litigation, including disparate treatment, disparate impact, and pattern and practice discrimination cases, according to Cynthia Pierre, the EEOC's director of field management programs.
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"The real issue is whether, when push comes to shove, they really will have the bodies in place in these various offices to pursue systemic cases, because it requires a substantial amount of person power to do these cases and a certain expertise," said Washington attorney David Cashdan, treasurer of the National Employment Lawyers Association, a plaintiffs' group.
Cashdan, a partner at Cashdan & Kane, wondered how this will impact the processing of individual cases.
"Will those people get short shrift?" he asked. "I worry about whether there will be an ancillary or parallel administrative pressure to pay less attention to them."
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Pierre did acknowledge that "some attorneys feel discouraged about [individual] charges not being accepted. We are working to change that mindset."
Cashdan has certainly heard those concerns in the trenches. "With or without the systemic unit, there are majore frustrations with people trying to get their charges attended to," he said.
Religious Discrimination Job Bias Case Tests Religious Privacy Rights
Legal Times, July 19, 2002 By Jonathan Groner.
A case percolating in federal court in Washington, D.C. poses a tangled question that few federal courts have ever grappled with: Can a worker's claim of job discrimination trump the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion?
Pamela Johnson, a personnel specialist for the Washington Times from 1989 until 1998, is alleging that she received a much lower raise than a co-worker who was a member of the Unification Church -- and then was fired when she complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about her treatment.
In order to find out whether there was a pattern of religious discrimination at the newspaper, Johnson's lawyers at the D.C. plaintiffs firm Cashdan, Golden & Kane say they need to know which employees were members of the church while Johnson worked there.
The Judge recommended that the Times designate a third party to obtain information about which of its employees were Unification Church members around the time of Johnson's complaints.
If any of those people received raises, this outside "designee" would compare those raises with the raises given to non-church members in the same departments and would furnish Facciola with a chart that omits the names of specific individuals.
Gender Discrimination Female Head Trainer Denied Opportunity With Men's Basketball Team Can Go to Trial BNA Employment Discrimination Report: Vol. 17, No. 7, pages 193-226., August 15, 2001.
A female head athletic trainer who was told she could not work with the men?s college basketball team because it was a gender issue should be allowed to take her employment discrimination claims to trial, a District of Columbia trial court has ruled.
Rejecting George Washington University?s motion for summary judgment, Judge Joan Zeldon of the District of Columbia Superior Court found that the Plaintiff had enough evidence to make out a gender discrimination claims under the District of Columbia Human Rights Act and a constructive discharge claim.
In rejecting summary judgment, Zeldon said Plaintiff "presented direct evidence of gender discrimination by citing to the alleged statements" by the athletic director. Given this direct evidence, Zeldon said there was no need to apply the burden shifting approach of
McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 US. 792,5 FEP Cases 965 (1973), as argued by the defendants.
Defendant argued that because Jenkins did not experience a decrease in salary or work, she was unable to establish an adverse employment action. Jenkins countered that the loss of discretion, supervisory power, and responsibility for the school?s premier sport were material adverse consequences.
The court said that because it was unclear whether the plaintiff experienced an adverse action, the issue needed to be presented to the jury.
Race Discrimination D.C. Judge Upholds $855,000 Bias Award By Neely Tucker, Washington Post
August 2, 2000; Page B2.
A D.C. Superior Court judge has upheld an $855,000 judgment against a national chain of pawnshops that fired the manager of its Georgetown store because she was black and thus not a color-coded match with her white clientele, one of the largest racial discrimination lawsuits on record in the District.
The company's hiring policy was at the center of the February trial, in particular a method of placing white store managers in white neighborhoods, and black store managers in black neighborhoods.
Disability (ADA) Discrimination Volunteer Firefighter Wins Lawsuit Against County Age Discrimination A Job Reassignment Leads to a Million-Dollar Jury Verdict
Wall Street Journal, Feb. 23, 1999.
A former managing editor at a Washington, D.C., publishing house, Bureau of National Affairs, says he suffered age discrimination in 1997 when his bosses moved him from his high-powered perch editing large publications to a "do nothing" job with equal pay. The Plaintiff, 58 years old at the time, was replaced by a co-worker 20 years younger. Two weeks ago, a D.C. Superior Court jury awarded him $1.5 million. His request to get his old job back is still pending.
Academic Cases
GW, MVC and Former MVC Employees Settle Litigation
Chapter News - 2001 Joint Press Release: May 4, 2001
Mount Vernon College, a former women's college in Washington, DC, which ceased to operate as an independent educational institution as of June 30, 1999 and The George Washington University and thirteen members of the former Mount Vernon College's faculty are pleased to announce today that they have resolved all issues relating to the lawsuit brought by the former faculty members. Under the settlement, the 13 former faculty members will dismiss all claims and collateral proceedings against Mount Vernon College and The George Washington University. The precise details of the settlement are confidential, but all parties stated that it was resolved to their mutual satisfaction.
After years of financial distress, the Mount Vernon College Board of Trustees declared a financial exigency in December 1997, terminated all staff and all non-tenured faculty as of June 30, 1998, and terminated all remaining tenured faculty as of June 30, 1999, after providing for the teach-out or transfer of all its remaining students. 11 tenured and 2 non-tenured faculty members filed suit in December 1998 against both Mount Vernon College and The George Washington University, which had provided substantial financial assistance to the College from October 1996 through its closure.
June 23, 2005: David Cashdan addresses the interplay of insurance and employment discrimination litigation at the NELA annual convention.
www.nela.org