Target Will Pay $3.75M to Settle Employee Discrimination Class Action

For $3.75 million, Target has settled a class action lawsuit alleging that the company’s background check policy is discriminatory.

As a result of the settlement, Target will take action to remedy the alleged discrimination including giving hiring preference to previously rejected black and Latino job applicants, pay damages to those no longer seeking jobs at Target, revise its background check system, and support nonprofits who help formerly incarcerated individuals find employment.

Plaintiffs Carnella Times and Erving Smith were previous job seekers at Target who believed they faced discrimination due to Target’s background check policy. They claimed that Target’s background check violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, because it disadvantages black and Latino job applicants.

The Target discriminatory hiring practices class action lawsuit alleged that Target doesn’t hire job applicants who have been convicted of felonies involving “violence, theft, or controlled substances,” in the seven years before they submitted their application. According to the workers, Target also does not hire applicants who they believe lied about or misrepresented their criminal backgrounds.

Times and Smith claimed that this practice is illegal under Tile VII because it affectively “imports the radical and ethnic disparities that exist in the criminal justice system into the employment process.” Thus, the workers claim that Target’s hiring practices amplify existing discrimination, disadvantaging black and Latino job applicants more than white applicants.

Target has agreed to a class action settlement, stating that they will take actions that include actively giving preference to more than 41,000 black and Latino job applicants who were previously rejected because of criminal history. The company will pay the $3.75 million to applicants who are no longer seeking employment with Target and were previously denied. Additionally, the company has agreed to donate $600,000 to nonprofit organizations who help previously incarcerated individuals find a job.

The company will also reportedly hire independent consultants to assess Target’s background check policy, and hire organizational psychology experts to analyze how Target uses criminal background checks in hiring decisions, and to help the company find a new, less discriminatory way to approach that information. 

In a positive response to the Target discriminatory background check policy class action lawsuit, the workers stated that the settlement “provides a process for remedying Target’s allegedly flawed hiring policies; it affords class members opportunities to obtain jobs or compensation; it funds a [system] that will help nonprofit organizations engaged in re-entry work.”

The workers expressed pleasure at the fact that the settlement not only compensated workers directly impacted, but makes efforts to better Target’s hiring approach going forward, and aids organizations working to decrease discrimination on a societal level.

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Times and Smith are represented by Ossai Miazad, Adam T. Klein, Lewis Steel, Cheryl-Lyn Bentley, and Christopher M. McNerney of Outten & Golden LLP; and Sherrilyn Ifill, Samual Spital, and Coty Montag of NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The Target Discriminatory Background Checks Class Action Lawsuit is Carnella Times, et al. v. Target Corporation, Case No. 1:18-cv-02993, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.