LITTLE ROCK — A federal appeals panel Tuesday sided with a Lee County School District employee who claimed she was demoted and forced to quit because she is white.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis said a federal judge erred when he partially overturned a jury’s decision in favor of Sharon Sanders in her federal discrimination lawsuit against the Lee County School District and certain members of its school board.
According to the 8th Circuit’s opinion, Sanders was employed as finance coordinator for the district in September 2007 when an election changed the makeup of the school board from four white members and three black members to four black members and three white members.
Within two months of the election, the new black majority on the school board voted to reassign the district’s only two white administrators, Sanders and Superintendent Wayne Thompson, to diminished positions. Sanders’ new assignment was food services assistant.
Within five months of Sanders’ reassignment, the school board’s black members moved to eliminate the position of food services assistant. The motion failed after one of the members withdrew her second, however.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Sanders took sick leave after being reassigned and remained on sick leave from November 2007 through August 2008. During that time she repeatedly asked the board for a job description defining her new duties, but none was provided.
In August 2008, the superintendent told her in a letter that he was recommending she be fired because of her extensive sick leave. She submitted a letter of resignation in September 2008 and later filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination, a hostile work environment and constructive discharge on the basis of race — i.e., that she was forced to quit because she is white.
The claim of a hostile work environment was dismissed, but the other allegations went to trial. The defendants argued at the trial that Sanders was demoted because of insubordination and was not discharged.
The jury ruled in Sanders’ favor and awarded her $10,000 in compensatory damages for emotional distress caused by discrimination, $60,825 in lost wages and benefits for being constructively discharged, and a total of $8,000 in punitive damages to be paid by certain school board members.
A federal judge later reversed the jury’s finding that Sanders was constructively discharged and reversed the award of punitive damages, though the judge left intact the racial discrimination claim and the jury’s award of $10,000 in compensatory damages.
Sanders requested nearly $47,000 in attorney’s fees, but the federal judge awarded her only about $3,000.
Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit reversed the judge’s ruling that Sanders was not constructively discharged.
“The evidence showing the board summarily reassigned the only two Caucasian employees in administrative positions shortly after the racial composition of the board changed, and then subsequently voted to eliminate the position to which Sanders had been reassigned, suffices as evidence of the board’s intent to force Sanders to quit,” Judge Kermit Bye wrote in the opinion.
Bye also wrote that it was “telling” that the board never provided Sanders with a job description outlining her new duties after reassigning her.
The 8th Circuit ordered new proceedings to determine whether Sanders should receive punitive damages. The jury was not properly instructed to consider whether the defendants knew they were violating federal law, the appeals court said.
The appeals court also ordered new proceedings to determine how the award of attorney’s fees should be affected by its ruling Tuesday.