Bias Claims of 2 Court Employees Are Rejected

Federal judges this week have rejected two court employees’ charges that they were the victims of racial discrimination when one was fired and the other passed over for a promotion in the court clerk’s office.

Chief U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. upheld a magistrate’s finding that filing clerk Nicolas Britto, a Cuban native, had not met “even the most minimal threshold requirements” for proving that he was discriminated against when a white co-worker was promoted into a job Britto desired.

Meanwhile, U.S. Magistrate Irma Gonzalez formally recommended that Thompson uphold the firing of Eddie Stewart, a black man who lost his job in the clerk’s office last month after sending a personal message on the court’s computer system that wound up in Atlanta. Stewart contends that the firing was in retaliation for his earlier complaint that the clerk’s office discriminates against minority employees in hiring and promotion.

The two workers’ allegations have embroiled the federal courthouse in controversy the past few months over the employment practices of the clerk’s office and the effectiveness of the court’s procedures for lodging discrimination complaints. Black attorneys’ groups have charged that the court practices “a systematic pattern of discrimination,” evident in the virtual absence of blacks and other minorities from management positions.

Thompson said Wednesday that the magistrates’ findings in the two cases indicate that there is no reason for concern about the operation of the clerk’s office under Chief Clerk William Luddy.

“At this juncture, I have not seen anything that would cause me to in any way step in and attempt to tell anybody how to run their operation,” Thompson said.

Britto said steps taken by the clerk’s office in recent weeks convinced him that his complaint had been taken to heart, even though he had not prevailed in the court’s formal grievance procedure. He noted that copies of the court’s equal employment opportunity policies had been distributed to employees and that Luddy had announced that all promotion opportunities in the office will be formally posted.

“People are happy to see that changes are being made that improve the situation for all the forces,” Britto said. “Even though the decision was not in my favor, the acts are.”

However, Stewart will continue to fight his dismissal after 10 years as a court clerk, according to Robert Lewis, a Ventura discrimination consultant who represents him.

“You can bet he will be appealing and taking the case further,” Lewis said. Gonzalez’s findings can be appealed to Thompson, who can either uphold them, order more investigation or conduct a hearing on the matter.

Stewart last year had contested his job evaluation, and the attorneys representing him charged that he was passed over for promotions because of his race. In December, Thompson ordered his evaluation upgraded into a range that qualified him for promotion, but said the decision had nothing to do with the allegations of discrimination.

Stewart was fired early last month, however, when he sent a personal message on the court’s computer system that upset employees at the Atlanta federal courthouse, to which it was mistakenly transmitted. The message--sent in the days surrounding bitter clashes between civil rights marchers and Ku Klux Klansmen in Forsyth County, Georgia--read: “People in Georgia better be cool. Dr. King is dead.”

Thomas Gayton, who has represented Stewart on behalf of the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Assn., an organization of black lawyers, said there was no question that Stewart’s firing stemmed from his discrimination complaint.

“Anyone who thinks it’s not related to the earlier complaint is living in a world of fantasy,” he said.