Black worker fired after he’s told to ‘forgive and forget’ co-worker’s slur, feds say

After a Black worker complained about a co-worker calling him a racial slur, the HR director defended the use of the slur — saying it was taken “the wrong way” and went on to harass him, according to a new federal lawsuit.

The former HR director for Bartow County, Georgia ordered the pair to shake hands, telling the worker to “forgive and forget,” court documents state. This took place during a meeting about the worker’s complaint.

However, he refused to shake hands with his co-worker and was fired two weeks later along with his brother-in-law, who is also Black and worked for the county, the Justice Department says.

Now the Justice Department is accusing Bartow County of race discrimination and retaliation against both men who were fired from their positions within the county’s road department, according to a news release. The department filed its lawsuit on Oct. 13.

McClatchy News contacted the county and its road department for comment on Oct. 14 and was awaiting a response.

“No one should be forced to labor in an environment where employers condone racial slurs and employees are expected to tolerate them,” U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan, of the Northern District of Georgia, said in a statement.

The worker and his brother-in-law first filed discrimination charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to the release. After the agency’s Atlanta office investigated their complaints, it found “reasonable cause” that Bartow County possibly violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and referred the charges to the Justice Department.

The case

The worker was employed by the Bartow County Road Department, which is in charge of county roads, from 2009 until he was fired in 2019, according to court documents. While working there, he was continuously promoted until reaching the position of a “mechanic II”.

His brother-in-law began working part-time for the department in 2016 before getting promoted to a full-time worker after a few months, a complaint states.

Outside of work, the former county mechanic raises pigs and had texted his co-worker a pig feed recipe on June 5, 2019, according to the complaint.

The next day, the man received a text from the co-worker, who is white, that said “(racial slur) at work showed me this, I ain’t tried it,” the complaint states.

Bartow County has a policy stating workers who believe they face discrimination or harassment must report it to HR, according to the Justice Department.

The man complained to a supervisor about his co-worker’s use of a slur the following Monday, June 10, according to the complaint. He also made it clear he did not want to work with the co-worker going forward.

His complaint made its way to the county’s HR director, who called the man into a meeting in her office that same day, the complaint says.

With his co-worker present in the room, the HR director “immediately began defending (the co-worker) and harassing (the man), leading him to believe he had done something wrong by reporting the text message and that it had offended him,” the complaint states.

She said the man had no reason to take offense to the slur, asserting that the worker ‘listened to rap music that uses (the slur)” and “probably refers to his friends using the same term,” according to the complaint.

Then, the HR director searched the slur on her phone and read a definition to him saying “You don’t think this is you?” before adding “Why didn’t you just call him a cracker and be done with it?,” the complaint states.

In response, the man said “we are all too old in this room to not know why this word is offensive” — but the HR director wanted him to move on from the issue, according to the complaint.

At the end of the meeting, the HR director asked the man if he had told anyone else about the matter, and he said he told his brother-in-law, the complaint says.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” the HR director responded before telling the road department director to “keep his eyes on” him, according to the complaint.

In the days after the meeting, both workers were accused of misconduct in relation to their submitted time sheets and were questioned about their work hours, the complaint says. Prior to the man complaining about his co-worker, the pair had never been questioned about their work before.

Two weeks after the man reported the slur, both he and his brother-in-law were fired for alleged “discrepancies” in their time sheets, according to the Justice Department.

The Justice Department accuses the county of wrongfully firing the men in an act of retaliation.

Both men have “experienced significant pain and suffering, emotional distress, anxiety, stress, and loss of enjoyment of life caused by the discriminatory conduct” of Bartow County, the complaint states.

Months after the men were fired, the HR director was investigated after a firefighter accused her of sexual harassment, according to the complaint. Instead of firing her, the county allowed her to resign.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit seeks to recover monetary damages, including lost wages, for the men and demands a trial by jury.

Bartow County is 50 miles northwest of Atlanta.

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