In the first jury trial at Little Rock’s federal courthouse since the coronavirus pandemic halted business as usual, a jury has awarded more than $330,000 to a black Little Rock woman after finding she was racially discriminated against at the state Department of Finance and Administration, where she worked.
“I believe that as a result of the death of George Floyd, the nation’s conscience has been pricked, and I believe white America is starting to understand the racism African Americans have been facing,” the woman’s attorney, Austin Porter Jr., said Friday.
Porter said he believes the fallout after the death of the Minneapolis man at the hands of police “made the jury very receptive” to Doris Smith’s case.
A jury of seven white men, one white woman and four black women delivered a verdict Thursday afternoon, after four days of testimony and less than two hours of deliberation, on all three claims Smith, 51, brought in a lawsuit she first filed in 2017.
The jury found that the department racially discriminated against her by failing to promote her to a pay grade equal to that of similarly situated white employees, retaliated against her for complaining about the discrepancy and then terminated her in 2018 because of her complaint of racial discrimination. They awarded her $223,333.81 in back pay and $108,000 to compensate her for mental anguish and humiliation.
Porter said he plans to file a motion within 10 days seeking her reinstatement as well as monetary compensation for lost benefits and payment of her attorney’s fees and costs. At the time she was fired, Smith was paid an annual salary of $108,1000 as an administrator for the Office of Intergovernmental Services.
The department was represented by the attorney general’s office. Amanda Priest, a spokeswoman for the office, said Friday that attorneys will discuss a possible appeal with department officials. The attorney general’s office declined to comment further on the case.
Smith, a certified public accountant, began working at the department as an internal auditor in April 2004. Porter said she was classified as an “exceptionally well-qualified applicant.”
She was promoted five times, gradually becoming the highest-ranking black employee in her pay grade.
Porter said that in late 2016, when the state was studying a new pay plan, Smith learned from a white colleague who was also an administrator and shared her pay grade that they were being considered for a lower pay grade while other administrators in the Division of Management Services were being considered for a higher pay grade.
Smith “began to ask questions,” Porter said, and when she couldn’t get answers, filed a discrimination complaint in February 2017 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
An initial draft of a Senate bill for revising the state employee compensation plan to make a uniform classification system listed Smith’s position at a reduced pay scale until the EEOC notified the department of her discrimination charge and management moved her position to the higher grade, he said.
Porter said management officials then began retaliating against Smith by placing her at the bottom of her new pay grade while all but one of her white colleagues in the same pay grade were paid more, forcing her to file another discrimination charge with the EEOC. He said Smith’s white colleague who also had initially faced lower pay was also eventually moved into the higher pay grade after complaining to her supervisor.
Porter accused Smith’s supervisor, Comptroller Paul Louthian, of starting “a campaign to get rid of Ms. Smith” and to make her the “scapegoat” for the office’s difficulty in implementing a grant program that she had successfully submitted for several years but that was resubmitted while she was out of the country on vacation and later needed modifications.
He said Smith was fired April 3, 2018. at Louthian’s behest, “which was just two weeks after the EEOC closed its investigation into Ms. Smith’s case and notified the agency.”
Porter said that in preparing for the lawsuit, he found that several black employees of the agency had been fired after complaining of race discrimination but that white employees who complained of sex, age and disability discrimination weren’t fired.
In court documents, attorneys representing the department said Smith was fired “because she failed to carry out her job duties, acted insubordinately, and directed employees under her supervision to act insubordinately.” They said she also “failed to provide the required documentation” for the grant, and that was one reason the grant wasn’t initially approved.