Due to confidentiality issues, I won’t disclose any information that may reveal a parties’ identity.

Very recently, one of my clients had 2 civil rights complaints filed against them with an enforcement agency by the same employee. Each complaint was a few months apart and were sort of “kitchen sink” complaints.  That is, the employee primarily complained of disability discrimination though their complaint included discrimination on the basis of many other protected classes too.

One of the problems that arose, on our end, was that we never responded to the complaints in a timely manner in the first place; I won’t explain why this happened but it did.  Although our delays had no bearing on whether the actual alleged discrimination occurred, in my opinion, it’s never a good idea to just blow-off a regulatory & enforcement agency (for more on how to deal with & respond to regulatory agency complaints, see this post). Nevertheless, after we officially responded, by denying all charges, & once we got the settlement process going, it took about 2 weeks from issuing our response to reaching a $1,250 settlement for both complaints.

This is the 3rd employment civil rights complaint I’ve settled in the $600 range over the past few months.  Here’s information on the earlier (September) complaint.

The rationale for settling all 3 of the complaints instead of going through hearings or trials is that it’s cheaper to settle in the $600 range than it is to pay my fees & lose a lot of time off from work preparing for & attending hearings.