Over the past few days I've taken a dance through the PACER online public court database system that I mentioned in my recent post, How to find a good lawyer. I looked for cases against the various national labs. Given the problem with labs going by various monikers and the fact that the labs are often run by corporations that don't bear the name of the laboratory, it is really difficult to dig up a comprehensive list of such cases (luckily enough for the labs, I guess). Also, cases before around 2002 don't have links to the PDF file of the Plaintiff Complaints.
Anyway, despite these limitations, I dug up some interesting stuff. So here, on Absinthe's nickel (the documents cost 8 cents a page to download off of PACER), are the Complaints associated with a potpourri of lawsuits against various national laboratories.
Regarding some recent cases of gender discrimination and/or sexual harassment in the national lab enviroment:
see here (Katherine Weber v Fermi National Lab), and
here (Sandra Biedron v Argonne National Lab), and
here (Barbara Cox v Brookhaven National Lab).
The first two cases tell the all too familiar tale of females at the lab being made to work under far less qualified males. God forbid a woman should actually be promoted in the lab environment in the same manner as the white males.
Note that none of the cases has claims under Title IX. In fact, I couldn't find a single case against a national lab that had a claim under Title IX. People, if you are thinking of launching a discrimination lawsuit against a national lab, seriously consider including Title IX! See my post on it for all the advantages it affords you over and above a Title VII claim.
Regarding race discrimination in the national lab system; even though I am white, the plight of the non-whites at the lab has not escaped my attention. Plus I have the statistics on hand that show non-whites are just as much, if not more, screwed out of career advancement perks as the females at the lab. The following cases used to have web-links to the PDF files but they are all large files and RadioUserLand apparently doesn't allow downloads of files bigger than one Mb, so if you want to see the files you'll have to go to PACER and download them for yourself:
(Tardd v Brookhaven National Lab) is an absolutely hair raising account of what went on at Brookhaven recently. Stuff like white lab workers parading around in KKK outfits, hanging nooses on the office doors of non-white lab workers, etc etc etc.
Oh yeah, and another race discrimination lawsuit against Brookhaven is (Benjamin v Brookhaven), this time filed by two of the people who were brave enough to support Tardd (and were made to suffer for it by the lab).
What is really utterly freakin' mindblowing however is that instead of addressing the problem Brookhaven is instead suing the New York Division of Human Rights for having the gall to tell a national lab that it can't have its white workers threatening the non-whites with lynching! (Brookhaven Science Associates v New York State Division of Human Rights) Apparently if the white males at Brookhaven wanna have a good ol' KKK lynch-fest of the coloreds on site, well, that's their own damn business <insert tobacco juice spitting here>.
