Five current and former Long Beach city employees have settled their lawsuit in which they alleged the city has disproportionately kept Black employees in lower-paying and unclassified positions, rejected their requests for promotion and equal pay and also created an anti-Black culture among city workers.
Attorneys for tech worker Christopher Stuart, Eric Bailey — who retired from the Public Works Department in 2021 — tech secretary Deborah Hill, administrative aide Sharon Hamilton and administrative analyst Donnell Russell Jauregui filed court papers Wednesday with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cunningham III informing him of an “unconditional” resolution of the case.
No terms were divulged.
“Together, we experienced race-based pay and promotion discrimination, a hostile work environment, retaliation and saw the adverse effects of the city’s failure to prevent these forms of mistreatment,” Stuart said in a sworn declaration. “I am bringing this case not only to seek accountability for what I’ve experienced, but also to stand with my co-plaintiffs who faced similar injustices.”
In her declaration, Hill questioned the fairness of the Wonderlic exam, a timed cognitive ability assessment used by employers and schools to measure problem-solving, learning capacity and aptitude.
“From my experience, the exam felt culturally biased,” Hill said. “Many of the questions and scenarios seemed to be based on personality traits and life experiences that do not reflect how I, and other Black employees I know, were raised.”
Hill said the cultural upbringing of Black people influences how they respond to certain situations and she says the Wonderlic exam did not account for that.
“As a result, it created an unfair barrier for qualified Black candidates seeking advancement,” Hill contended.
The workers alleged that they were paid less than non-Black coworkers, repeatedly denied promotions and that they suffered backlashes when they complained.
“All five plaintiffs’ claims flow from the city’s common employment policies and a pattern or practice of discrimination against Black employees, as reflected in the similar experiences with unequal pay and promotion that each plaintiff had,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys stated in their court papers.
The experiences of the five individuals overlap because the same supervisors, managers, and/or human resources personnel were involved, according to the suit filed in June 2021.
In their court papers, attorneys for the city said some of the plaintiffs’ claims were time-barred. The defense lawyers also said that the alleged examples of a failure by the city to follow the law that were cited by the plaintiffs encompassed more than 20 years and that in reality the decisions at issue were made by different people, refuting the plaintiffs’ claim of a continuing violation.