In a case that began with the filing of a Title VII discrimination lawsuit by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1997 and that has since gone up to the U.S. Supreme Court and back down to the lower courts for a third time, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed a $3.3 million attorney’s fees sanction against the agency on the ground that its continued pursuit of class-based, “pattern-or-practice” sex discrimination claims against CRST was “frivolous, unreasonable and/or groundless.”
In awarding the sanction, the appeals court concluded in EEOC v. CRST Van Expedited, Inc., No. 18-1446 (8th Cir. December 10, 2019), that the “EEOC wholly failed to satisfy its statutory pre-suit obligations.”
A copy of the Eighth Circuit’s decision is available online
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.