Current Cases

On March 28, 2017, Outten & Golden, LLP filed an Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (“EEOC”) charge on behalf of Walter Pickett and a putative class of other job applicants similarly impacted by DHL Supply Chain’s (“DHL’s”) criminal background check policies and practices. Mr. Pickett alleges that DHL violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”) by refusing to hire as employees individuals like him with criminal histories. According to his EEOC charge, Mr. Pickett was hired for a temporary warehouse position in February 2016 by Snider-Blake, a staffing agency...

On May 1, 2020, Plaintiffs Vidal Soler and Corey Stewart filed a complaint in the Southern District of New York against Fresh Direct. The complaint alleges that Fresh Direct has violated New York civil rights laws requiring an individualized assessment of qualifications for employment before an applicant is denied a job because of his or her criminal record. According to the complaint, FreshDirect instead improperly uses “categorical bans on wide swaths of convictions before any individual Article 23-A analysis” while also “excessively weighing certain Article 23-A factors over other factors...

Georgia Tech & USG Criminal History Discrimination On February 7, 2019, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Outten & Golden LLP, and Atlanta-based Buckley Beal LLP recently filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), and the University System of Georgia (USG), alleging that the University’s criminal background check policies and practices used to screen job applicants result in unlawful discrimination against African Americans in violation of Title VII of the Civil...

On Wednesday, June 26, 2019, Outten and Golden LLP, along with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and Youth Represents, filed a class action lawsuit against Macy’s, Inc., owner and operator of hundreds of retail stores (collectively “Macy’s”), challenging its use of an overbroad and unnecessarily punitive criminal history screen in making hiring and termination decisions. Plaintiff The Fortune Society (“Fortune”) brings the lawsuit on behalf of itself and its participants seeking to hold Macy’s accountable for violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII...

On August 14, 2008, Outten & Golden’s client filed a class-wide race discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Madison Square Garden alleging that MSG discriminates against African-American job applicants by illegally using criminal history reports in making hiring decisions. The charge alleges that, by revoking an offer of employment to Outten & Golden’s client, MSG violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and engaged in a policy or pattern and practice of discrimination against African-American job applicants. A corporate policy that...

On August 15, 2018, Outten & Golden filed suit against NTT Data, Inc., one of the largest information technology services providers in the world. The suit challenges NTT’s blanket rejection of job applicants with criminal records, even where their criminal history has no bearing on an ability to perform the work in question. Plaintiffs bring class claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, challenging the disproportionate impact of NTT’s background check policies and practices on African American applicants—and because NTT’s policies and practices import into the employment...