judicial insanity

Fourth Circuit OKs Retaliation on Whistleblower

While a group of workers watched a breaking news story on the office TV, one employee known for making similar comments blurted out, "They should put those two black monkeys in a cage with a bunch of black apes and let the apes f**k them." Last Friday, May 12, a divided Fourth Circuit panel concluded that there's nothing illegal about firing an employee for reporting such racially inflammatory remarks to supervisors.

Republican appointees Paul Niemeyer
(Bush I) and H. Emory Widener (Nixon) joined in the majority over a sharp dissent by Clinton appointee Robert King, who simply could not fathom a ruling so manifestly contrary to federal anti-discrimination law and the public policy goals underlying it.

Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 outlaws retaliation against employees who report workplace discrimination, including racially hostile work settings. By dismissing Jordan's case at the earliest possible stage of litigation, Judges Niemeyer and Widener ruled that IBM did not violate Title VII even if it did retaliate against Jordan for his report. Their reasoning? Jordan was not blowing the whistle on what a reasonable person would perceive as unlawful; rather, they said, he was reporting nothing more than a "unique and never-to-be-repeated" incident that did not reflect a fully-ripened or "planned" racially hostile work environment. Such a report, they concluded, was insufficient to trigger Title VII's protections against retaliation.
(Click here for more (http://e2ma.net/go/270183166/213696/6176958/goto:http://www.afj.org/fullcourtpress.html))


Jordan v. Alternative Resources Corp., No. 05-1485 (4th Cir. May 12, 2006)