Black Court Clerk Says Stray Message Only an Excuse for Firing

A U.S. District Court clerk in San Diego, who attorneys claim was denied a chance for promotion because he is black, has been fired for using the court’s computer to send a personal message that went astray.

The clerk, Eddie Stewart, 31, who had a string of positive job evaluations during his 10 years at the court, confirmed that he sent the message. But he said he was shocked by his firing because “sending (personal) messages is something all of us commonly do in court. It’s not like it’s a forbidden act that we’re afraid to do. There has never been a policy against (sending messages) in the 10 years I’ve worked there.”

Stewart, who lives in Spring Valley with his wife and two children, said he has consulted an attorney and may file a wrongful dismissal suit.

The firing is the latest episode to focus attention on the employment practices of the district court. In recent months, two groups of black attorneys have alleged the court--charged with enforcing federal equal opportunity laws--itself practices “a systematic pattern of discrimination” in the clerk’s office, particularly in the denial of promotions.

Officials at the 10-judge court have said such charges are baseless.

Stewart’s supervisor, Chief Clerk William Luddy, cited “misuse of the computer” as grounds for the employee’s dismissal on Tuesday. Luddy indicated it was the content of the message and where it wound up that caused a furor.

Stewart’s message, which he says was intended for a fellow San Diego courthouse employee, went astray and wound up in the district court clerk’s office in Atlanta last Friday.

While there “have probably been personal messages that have gone out of this court--like other courts--in the past, we’ve seen nothing like this one,” Luddy said.

The message, according to Stewart, read: “People in Georgia better be cool. Dr. King is dead.” Stewart said that, in programming the message, he inadvertently used the wrong digits, causing it to go to Atlanta.

Luddy described the message as “very upsetting to (court employees) in Atlanta” because of recent protest marches by civil rights demonstrators. On Saturday, more than 20,000 protesters turned out in Forsyth County to protest a Ku Klux Klan attack on an earlier march held to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was the largest such demonstration since the tumultuous civil rights demonstrations of the 1950s and 1960s.

Officials in Atlanta contacted Washington about the errant message, which eventually was traced to San Diego and Stewart through the clerk’s personal computer access number, Luddy said.

“The computers are used for criminal docketing, but we have a message capability in the program as well,” Luddy said. “Employees are allowed to send messages but only as long as they are official business . . . like inquiring of another court what they do in certain cases, in certain situations.”

“The fact that (Stewart’s) message got to that particular court at that particular time, in the midst (of all the protest activity) was very upsetting for those people,” Luddy said. “It was very inappropriate . . . It is expressly forbidden to use (the court computers) for personal messages.”

Luddy said that, after he was informed of the misdirected message, he asked Stewart whether he had sent it. Stewart said he had but intended it to go no further than the San Diego courthouse.

Luddy said he then wrote a report on the episode and “requested permission to begin termination proceedings” against Stewart. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. agreed that Stewart should be fired, Luddy said.

Thompson was out of state at a conference and could not be reached for comment Thursday. But R. Townsend Robinson, chief of the Washington office that monitors the federal courts’ employment practices, said that “fooling around with our automated system is not a joke.” Robinson said she was “not shocked” that Stewart was fired for the offense.

“This does not sound like an inconsequential offense to me,” Robinson said. “You just can’t have people playing around with the system. There’s no telling when a file that means a lot to someone might be lost as a result of something like this. If the message had stayed in San Diego, that’d be one thing. But all the way to Atlanta?”

Stewart, however, maintains that numerous district court employees--in San Diego and elsewhere--communicate socially via messages.

“We receive messages from New York and many other places,” Stewart said. “One woman in the office made friends with someone in New York after a message from there arrived in our office by accident.”

Consequently, Stewart said he believes he has been unjustly singled out and punished.He also speculated that the message is “just an excuse for them” to dismiss him--a charge Luddy denied.

“This is really superficial,” Stewart said. “I’m sure it’s connected with my hearing on matters involving racial discrimination and biases in promotion.”

Stewart has supporters for his assessment of his fate.

“To fire him based on the use of a computer to send a personal message seems a little bit steep to me personally,” said Wesley Pratt, past president of the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Assn., an organization of black attorneys. “It seems to me this could easily be perceived as a retaliatory action. It’s a bit heavy, especially considering Eddie’s exemplary work record.”

And at least one of Stewart’s colleagues charged that the dismissal is part of a pattern of racial discrimination by court management.

“Here you have a model employee, a good worker who has been at his job and receiving good evaluations for 10 years, and he is fired just like that without so much as a warning or reprimand,” said Nicolas Britto, a deputy district court clerk who has filed a complaint of his own alleging racial discrimination.

“It seems an unjust punishment. You don’t just throw someone’s life away, someone’s career, for something like that.”

Stewart, described by fellow employees as a soft-spoken man who works quietly at his computer terminal, last year challenged a performance evaluation that rated him two points below “excellent”--the level required for consideration for a promotion to courtroom clerk. Courtroom clerk posts, highly coveted positions, historically have been filled almost exclusively by whites, the black attorney groups claim.

Stewart wrote a letter to Judge Thompson, asking that he be reevaluated by a supervisor who was more familiar with his work.

Meanwhile, attorneys with the Gilliam Bar Assn. and the National Conference of Black Lawyers filed a memo alleging the clerk’s office practices racial discrimination in employment.

On Dec. 18, Thompson directed Luddy to raise Stewart’s evaluation rating to within the excellent range, noting that several complimentary letters about the employee had been overlooked. The judge declined to consider the allegations of discrimination, however, and that issue has lingered unresolved.

According to Luddy, Stewart may appeal his dismissal by filing a grievance, which would be considered by Thompson.