A class action lawsuit (view the Complaint here) by current and former Black employees of the City of Long Beach—Christopher Stuart, Eric Bailey, Deborah Hill, Sharon Hamilton, and Donnell Russell Jauregui—is now set for an initial hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court on December 8, 2021, according to court documents recently filed.
The case name is Christopher Stuart, et al. v. City of Long Beach.
The suit alleges that Long Beach “is far behind peer municipalities in releasing hiring, pay, promotion, discipline, and termination data by race and other protected classifications in order to name the problem [systematic racism].”
It further alleges:
“In fact, the City continues to systematically subject Black employees to unequal pay on the basis of race and color by (1) paying Black employees less than similarly-situated non-Black employees, (2) hiring Black employees disproportionately into lower-paying classifications, levels, pay steps, occupational job categories, and groups compared to non-Black employees; (3) disproportionately rejecting Black employees’ reclassification and out-of-class pay requests compared to non-Black employees; and (4) disproportionately hiring and keeping Black employees as Non-Career employees and/or unclassified employees. This list is not exhaustive.”
Factual allegations in the suit include, “altering the eligibility requirements, including the benchmark for passing exam scores, to favor non-Black employees” and “preventing Black employees from applying through tap-on-the-shoulder hiring practices.”
In perhaps the suit’s most explosive allegation, a white City supervisor named John Black is accused of being “openly racist against Black people” and implying that “it was honorable to be in the Ku Klux Klan” while passing over Black workers for promotion to promote less qualified employees.
The suit moves to its Initial Status Conference hearing after both sides lodged successful peremptory challenges against two successive judges handling the case.
The current judge assigned is Judge David Cunningham III, an African American former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, former board member of the Los Angeles Urban League, and former member of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Equity Oversight Panel.
The case was reported on by the Los Angeles Times and other outlets when first filed last June.
Plaintiffs are represented by the firm Medina Orthwein LLP, while defendant City of Long Beach is represented by the locally well-connected firm Keesal, Young & Logan (whose principle Samuel “Skip” Keesal is a longtime political donor to Long Beach elected officials). The Long Beach City Attorney’s office routinely outsources litigation.
