Civil rights agency not serving everyday Californians

OPINION – The government should never have a financial incentive to penalize people. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening with one of California’s state departments, much to the detriment of the people the agency is supposed to serve.

The California Civil Rights Department, formerly known as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, is responsible for defending the rights of thousands of Californians who face discrimination in the workplace. As a state department, CRD’s core goal should be to serve California’s citizens, not generate publicity or score large settlements to grow its own bottom line.

Unfortunately, CRD’s recent actions reflect the latter.

Until this past decade, CRD focused primarily on investigating individual complaints of discrimination and harassment in housing and employment. But things started to shift when, in response to the department settling its first multi-million dollar lawsuit, legislators passed a 2012-2013 budget trailer bill that removed the cap on damages that CRD could pursue. The Legislature allowed the Civil Rights Department to start using the awarded attorneys’ fees and costs from cases in which they prevailed in court to fund department needs.

In other words, that budget trailer bill gave CRD’s leadership the go-ahead to behave less like civil servants and more like partners at law firms that specialize in massive class-action lawsuits.

According to the most recently available summary report from 2020, the department accepted 5,784 individual complaints for investigation. That same year, the department filed 10 civil actions in court, six of which “involve group or class allegations covering approximately 10,000 aggrieved persons.”

How is CRD making resource allocation decisions between thousands of complaints deemed worthy of investigation and a handful of civil lawsuits? Are these decisions affected by the financially lucrative nature of civil suits versus the not-so-lucrative prospects of investigating individual complaints?

CRD’s lawyers and staff have certainly been busy lately with a slew of high profile, “big-game hunting” type lawsuits that would promise massive gains to the department should they win in court.

The past few years have seen the department bring suits against Cisco, Tesla, video game companies Activision Blizzard and Riot Games, Disney and the producers of well-known television show “Criminal Minds,” as well as the popular clothing chain Forever 21. For most of these cases, potential settlements amounted to millions of dollars, as well as ample press exposure for the department.

The Civil Rights Department has even gone as far as to object to the settlements reached between plaintiffs and defendants, delaying the payout process to alleged victims as a consequence. For example, when CRD’s federal counterpart, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, reached an $18 million settlement with video game company Activision Blizzard on claims of sexual harassment, CRD lawyers tried to block the settlement in court and file their own case against Activision.

Unlike CRD, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission doesn’t collect any portion of the settlement to fund their own department. So perhaps that explains why CRD is so adamant about pursuing larger settlements at the risk of delaying payment to victims: The larger the settlement, the more money the department makes.

Why are we allowing this kind of behavior from a state department?

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature need to investigate CRD’s shift over the past decade in pursuing multi-million dollar settlements and flashy headlines, instead of sticking up for everyday Californians.

Matt Rexroad is an attorney and political consultant. @MattRexroad