After suffering initial setbacks, a group of Black people hoping to work as corrections officers succeeded in getting a federal judge to certify a class action accusing the Cook County Sheriff’s Office of discriminatory hiring practices.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Coleman issued an opinion Aug. 8 granting a motion for class certification, nearly a full year after denying the same request. The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that denial as related to certain subclasses, after which the plaintiffs filed a third amended complaint.
The applicants sued Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart as well as the County Sheriff’s Merit Board. The certification request concerned a Title VII disparate impact claim challenging three of the board’s seven hiring process steps: the first and second written exam and the physical ability test.
The plaintiffs sought creation of four classes: one for any Black applicant who failed the first written test from July 2014 through April 2016; one for those who failed after April 2016; applicants who failed the second written test after 2014; and a final group for those who passed both written tests but failed the physical after July 2014.
County defendants challenged the use of the July 2014 start date, noting the group didn’t lodge its first Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Charge until Jan. 8, 2016, a span of “well over 300 days” and therefore outside the statutory limit.
“Plaintiffs explain that the written testing date of July 2014 should be included in the class definition because it corresponds to hiring rounds that took place after March 14, 2015, which was 300 days before the first EEOC charge was filed,” Coleman wrote. “The court, however, will not deny plaintiffs’ motion for class certification based on these class definitions as defendants argue. Instead, plaintiffs’ subclasses 1, 3, and 4 must include the time period starting on March 14, 2015, which is 300 days prior to the first EEOC Charge, rather than July 2014.”
The defendants also said the plaintiffs couldn’t demonstrate sufficient commonality among putative class members, but Coleman said the complaint relies on “the administration of the three standardized tests, which do not involve the exercise of discretion.”
Whether the tests had a disparate impact on Black job applicants, or whether the county was justified in using the exams at all, are questions that apply to everyone who would be in one of the classes, Coleman said. Although the plaintiffs didn’t challenge the validity of the tests, Coleman quoted from the Seventh Circuit’s opinion vacating her initial dismissal:
“The district court did not need to consider whether (plaintiffs’) statistical experts controlled for racially neutral factors or whether the tests had been validated for use at other departments. These considerations go not to commonality but instead to whether the exam subclasses can ultimately succeed on the merits. We cannot know at this stage. But what we can say is that, as to each subclass, the answer seems likely to be the same for each class member.”
The defendants also challenged the issue of class typicality, arguing the plaintiffs “prepared for the standardized tests in different ways and attempted to pass the examinations at different times,” Coleman wrote. “These minor variances make no difference to the court’s class certification analysis, especially because defendants have not identified any legal authority suggesting these differences defeat the typicality requirement.”
Finally, the county defendants unsuccessfully argued the complaint should fail because the applicants didn’t prove they would’ve been hired but for the three tests, pointing to the other four benchmarks.
“As the Court explained in an earlier ruling in this lawsuit, in the context of disparate impact cases, Title VII guarantees minorities and women the opportunity to compete equally with white workers based on job-related criteria,” Coleman wrote. “Therefore, losing the opportunity to compete equally or being excluded from jobs due to race or gender are actionable injuries.”
The Black job applicants have been represented in the action by attorneys Marni Willenson, of Willenson Law, of Chicago; Cyrus Mehri, Michael Lieder and Joshua Karsh, of Mehri & Skalet, of Washington, D.C.; and Matthew J. Piers and Margaret E. Truesdale, of Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, of Chicago.
The sheriff's office has been represented by attorneys Tom H. Luetkemeyer, Robert Shannon and V. Brette Bensinger, of Hinshaw & Culberton; and Lyle K. Henretty, of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.