race discrimination

LVBH client settles lawsuit against San Rafael City Schools

Colored pencils with "Equality" written out — *Shutterstock*

June 6, 2022 – Juan Rodriguez, a beloved principal at Venetia Valley School, has settled a discrimination and retaliation case that he brought against San Rafael City Schools (“SRCS”). SRCS has agreed to pay $725,000 to settle Mr. Rodriguez’s claims.

The lawsuit, filed in September 2020, alleged that the Superintendent and Board of San Rafael City Schools discriminated against Mr. Rodriguez based on his race and national origin, and because of his vocal advocacy on behalf of Latino students and his efforts to achieve racial equity within the San Rafael City Schools. The suit further alleged that as a result of Mr. Rodriguez’s complaints about unlawful discrimination, the District retaliated, defamed him and demoted him in March 2020, which led to his eventual departure from the District.

As Principal of Venetia Valley K-8 school since 2012, Mr. Rodriguez had consistently advocated for practices intended to minimize or eliminate racial and ethnic bias in the school system. The Venetia Valley School largely serves the Spanish-speaking students. During his tenure as principal, Mr. Rodriguez instituted changes that elevated the school from one of the lowest performing schools in Marin County to a California Gold Ribbon School. He received numerous accolades for his work in the district. Despite both subtle and overt opposition from the District, during his tenure, Mr. Rodriguez introduced programs intended to address issues which he reasonably believes were caused by racial bias. In response, the superintendent and its board repeatedly retaliated against Mr. Rodriguez and eventually demoted him from principal to teacher.

Juan Rodriguez shares his reflections,

I brought this lawsuit on the grounds that SRCS was engaging in discriminatory practices against socio-economically disadvantaged Latino students and because my advocacy on their behalf resulted in ongoing retaliation that included my removal from the role of principal. My hope is that as a result of this lawsuit, SRCS will take meaningful steps to address systemic racism, and create an atmosphere that supports and provides equal resources for students of color.
My work with the greater Latino community was inspired by my own journey through higher education, as a first-generation Latino student. I was fortunate enough to have mentors who validated my identity and who opened up the world to me, so that I could see beyond my barrio and imagine possibilities. My hope was to provide this same source of light and support for the students of SRCS for many years to come. Nevertheless, I remain a committed educator and advocate for educational equity.

Mr. Rodriguez was represented by Leslie Levy and Leticia Chavez of Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams, LLP, a boutique law firm in Oakland that represents individuals in workplace disputes. Ms. Levy commented on the lawsuit:

“It has been an honor to represent Mr. Rodriguez in this matter. While the settlement provides closure for our client, we remain seriously concerned about the incompetency and inappropriate conduct by the District’s Human Resources department. Furthermore, we are concerned that the District will not see this lawsuit as a wake up call to adequately address the needs and rights of students of color.”

For further information regarding the matter, visit www.levyvinick.com or call Leslie Levy at 510-318-7705.

Wendy Musell interviewed on pay disparities

Law.com interviewed LVBH attorney Wendy Musell about the persistence of pay disparities despite concerted efforts to close them. The article highlights the fact that equal pay for equal work is just one of many actions that can be taken to ensure that women and people of color attain pay equity.

Other factors to be considered are hiring and promotion practices as well as transparency about how employers determine pay for different jobs. Additionally, non-salary compensation such as stock grants, stock options, and discretionary bonuses should be evaluated, especially in high-wage industries. In Silicon Valley “there’s not transparency regarding what those (compensation) packages are, why they are, who they’re offered to, what the value is, how they’re vested, whether folks end up getting discretionary bonuses, a vesting faster, or other tranches,” Ms. Musell said.

Hilary Hammell quoted in Aljazeera report on Tesla racism trial in San Francisco

Photo by Steve Jurvetson – Flikr Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

News site Aljazeera turned to LVBH Attorney Hilary Hammell for comment on a trial in San Francisco where an assembly line worker alleges racism was rampant at the Tesla manufacturing plant. The article – Tesla to face racism allegations from Black worker in open court — focuses on the first hurdle many workers must overcome to bring their cases to trial — defeating forced arbitration.

Hilary Hammell, along with LVBH partner Jean Hyams, penned an opinion piece for the Washington Post last year calling on employers to end forced arbitration clauses and stop actively shielding themselves from accountability in court for race discrimination in their workplaces.

In commenting on Tesla being held to account in court, Hammell told Aljazeera “For Tesla to have to defend itself in the public eye is very important.”

October 4, 2021 Update: Underscoring the importance of the right to trial by jury rather than private arbitration, today a jury rendered a verdict in favor of the employee, Owen Diaz, for $6.9 million in damages and further awarded $130,000,000 in punitive damages against Tesla.

Dr. Margaret Mitchell, founder of Google Ethical AI Team, terminated after reporting equity issues of race and gender and opposing the firing of co-lead of Ethical AI Research Team Dr. Timnit Gebru

February 22, 2020 – Dr. Margaret Mitchell, founder and co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI research team with Dr. Timnit Gebru, has provided additional information regarding events leading up to her termination, which was announced late Friday afternoon. Dr. Mitchell has confirmed that, before and after Google’s termination of Dr. Gebru, she was vocally raising concerns of race and gender equity at Google, including publicly opposing the mistreatment and firing of her co-lead.

Regarding her own termination from Google, Dr. Mitchell explained: “I tried to use my position to raise concerns about race and gender inequity, and to protest Google’s deeply problematic firing of Dr. Timnit Gebru. To now be fired has been devastating. It’s my hope that speaking out will lead to one more step on the path of ethical AI. ”

Shortly after Dr. Mitchell voiced her concerns that discrimination played a role in Google’s decision to terminate her Black colleague, Google placed Dr. Mitchell on leave and revoked her corporate access, finally firing her on February 19, 2021.

“You seriously have to wonder what kind of message Google is trying to send to its employees of color and their allies. In its policies, the company encourages its employees to speak up. Terminating Dr. Mitchell will have a chilling effect on employees who want to advocate equality and fairness,” said Sharon Vinick of Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP.

“This is not the first Google employee fired shortly after making reports of sex and race discrimination. Google’s actions belie its professed commitment to equality in the workplace, particularly in artificial intelligence,” said LVBH’s Wendy Musell.

Dr. Mitchell is considered an expert in the field of ethics and artificial intelligence and has been widely published. She was the founder of Google’s Ethical Artificial Intelligence team. In 2015, Dr. Mitchell won one of the first Deep Learning competitions for language generation in the COCO image captioning challenge. She further developed this work within the Seeing AI application for the visually impaired, winning the prestigious Helen Keller award. She has co-organized many workshops on fairness, accountability and transparency in machine learning, co-founded the Ethics in NLP workshop and the WiNLP group within ACL, is in the steering committee of the conference on fairness accountability and transparency in sociotechnical systems, and was Google’s representative for the Partnership on AI in the Fairness, Transparency, and Accountability working group. Dr. Mitchell’s TED talk on the topic of bias in computer vision and NLP has received over a million views, and she has written more than 40 papers, including top-tier conferences for NLP, computer vision, cognitive science, and AI Ethics. Most recently, her work on Model Cards with Google Cloud was recognized in a Harvard Kennedy Spotlight.

Dr. Mitchell attended The John Hopkins University Human Language Technology Center of Excellence as a Postdoctoral researcher and holds a Ph.D. from University of Aberdeen and a Master’s Degree from the University of Washington in Computational Linguistics.

Dr. Mitchell is represented by Sharon Vinick and Wendy Musell of Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP, a law firm devoted to representing employees in workplace disputes. For further information regarding this matter, visit www.levyvinick.com or call Sharon Vinick at 510-318-7702 or Wendy Musell 510-381-6362.

LVBH client featured in Marin newspaper article

The Marin Independent-Journal published an article discussing a lawsuit filed by Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP on behalf of Juan Rodriguez against San Rafael City Schools. In his lawsuit, Mr. Rodriguez alleges claims of discrimination, retaliation, and defamation. Mr. Rodriguez was the principal of Venetia Valley School for 8 years until last March, when he was demoted to a teaching position.

School principal files lawsuit for discrimination, retaliation, and defamation against San Rafael City Schools

Juan Rodriguez, an educator in the school district for over 19 years, filed the lawsuit alleging that the San Rafael City Schools Superintendent and Board discriminated against him based on race and national origin discrimination, and because of his vocal advocacy for the racial equity within the San Rafael City Schools. As a result, the District retaliated and defamed him and demoted him in March. As Principal of Venetia Valley K-8 school since 2012, Mr. Rodriguez had consistently advocated for practices intended to minimize or eliminate racial and ethnic bias in the school system. The Venetia Valley School largely serves the Spanish-speaking students of the district. During his tenure as principal, Mr. Rodriguez instituted changes that elevated the school from one of the lowest performing schools in Marin County to a California Gold Ribbon School. Despite both subtle and overt opposition from the District, Mr. Rodriguez introduced programs intended to address issues which he reasonably believes were caused by racial bias. In response, the superintendent and its board have repeatedly retaliated against Mr. Rodriguez for his advocacy on behalf of staff and students of color.

Even though there was overwhelming community support for Mr. Rodriguez, the School Board demoted him stating that there were “compelling reasons.” They have yet to clarify what those compelling reasons are.

Mr. Rodriguez is represented by Leslie Levy of Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP, a boutique law firm in Oakland which specializes in representing employees in workplace disputes.

Black workers matter, so end forced arbitration

This post, authored by LVBH’s Jean Hyams and Hilary Hammell, originally appeared as a Guest Opinion in The Washington Post.

As employment lawyers who have devoted our careers to fighting discrimination in the workplace, we are heartened to see the world awaken to systemic and structural racism after the egregious killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. We are also keenly interested to watch corporate giants weigh in from their positions of privilege and power, as they post online messages supporting Black Lives Matter, tweet condemnation of racist police violence and donate to organizations such as the NAACP.

These gestures are superficial responses to this moment. There are a number of things companies should do to address systemic racism in corporate America, but one thing most businesses must do is stop actively shielding themselves from accountability in court for race discrimination in their workplaces.

Existing laws prohibit race discrimination at work. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, along with the laws of most states, makes it illegal for an employer to impose on black workers or black job applicants different terms and conditions of employment. This kind of discrimination can be subtle and unintentional, including double standards, pay disparities and glass ceilings, as well as hiring and recruiting only from historically white networks. And of course, discrimination can also take the form of hostility and abuse: from epithets such as “lazy” to the n-word and nooses. Retaliation at work is also illegal. If you complain about a racist culture and are then fired, demoted or pushed out, that’s also against the law.

Title VII and its state counterparts were meant to usher in a new era of tolerant and inclusive workplaces. But they are effectively toothless in the majority of U.S. corporations for one simple reason: forced arbitration.

Forced arbitration means that as a condition of hire, an employee must sign a document promising never to sue the employer in court for the company’s illegal actions — even in civil rights cases. Instead of going to court, the employee agrees to go only to an “arbitrator.”

Arbitration allows corporations to avoid being properly held accountable for violating anti-discrimination laws. In a lawsuit filed in court, anyone can access the court file and read the allegations of discrimination against an employer. Trials are open to the public. In arbitration, however, the allegations are secret, and trials are conducted out of public view and before an “arbitrator,” not a jury.

In court, the judge is a public employee, and a jury of nine to 12 people from the community — from diverse races, backgrounds and ages — decides the case. In arbitration, the arbitrator decides everything. The majority of arbitrators are lawyers or retired judges; almost all are older white men. These are the people who have the sole power to determine whether race discrimination happened or not. And they are paid by the company to make that decision and can get repeat business from the employers. Arbitrators can refuse to allow employees to take depositions, get documents and otherwise prove their case — something that does not happen in court. There is almost zero ability to appeal the decision. It’s no surprise, then, that plaintiffs lose more in arbitration than in court, and when they do win, they win less money. The bias against plaintiffs has been well-documented. And law professor Michael Z. Green long ago called out the integrity of a system that does not offer black claimants any real opportunity to adjudicate their claims before a person of color.

Arbitration eviscerates the powerful civil rights laws that were meant to end discrimination in the workplace. Just as various legal technicalities such as qualified immunity allow police officers to escape accountability for racist killings, arbitration allows employers to escape meaningful accountability for race discrimination their employees endure.

We hold out hope that change is possible. In response to the #MeToo movement, many corporations got rid of forced arbitration. Perhaps companies moved by the Black Lives Matter movement will get serious not just about decrying white supremacy but also about allowing themselves to be held fully accountable. Those that fail to do so will continue to benefit from structural inequities while simply paying lip service to a “trending” cause.