Black Secret Service Agents File Bias Suit

Black U.S. Secret Service agents filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday accusing their employer, the Treasury Department, of discriminating against them for more than two decades.

The bodyguards, who protect the president and other top officials, said that since 1974, they have been victims of racial bias through the agency’s employment practices, mainly by being passed up for promotions. The agents also said colleagues subjected them to repeated racial slurs.

Agents are “prepared to take a bullet for the president, they’re prepared to take a bullet for the vice president,” said John Relman, one of the Washington lawyers representing the security officers. “They’re in a position where they’re going to lay down their lives. In exchange, they cannot get a simple promotion to a position that they deserve, that they worked for and that they’re entitled to.”

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of about 250 agents who have worked at the agency during the last 26 years, seeks as much as $300,000 per agent and back pay for those who were unfairly denied promotions. The plaintiffs also demand that the agency crack down on racist remarks from other workers and change how evaluations, job assignments, promotions and transfers are carried out.

Agent Reginald G. Moore, a 16-year veteran who protected President Clinton from 1994 to 1999, has been denied numerous promotions, although he has received high marks for his job performance, Relman said. John E. Turner, who guarded Vice President Al Gore and has worked for 19 years at the agency, has also won high job ratings while being turned down for at least two promotions, according to the lawsuit. In both cases, a less-qualified white male was selected instead, the agents alleged.

Another lawyer representing the agents, David J. Shaffer, won similar class-action lawsuits against the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms during the last decade after alleging that the agencies’ promotion procedures discriminated against black employees.

Shaffer said complaints filed from the 1970s through the 1990s got many responses, none of them meaningful.

In February, the agents filed a bias complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After not receiving a satisfactory response, the agents said, they decided to file the suit.

Two of the Secret Service’s top 10 officials and four of the 11 field office directors are black, according to the agency.

About 9%, or 220, of the approximately 2,500 Secret Service officers are black.