Edward Jones Class Action Says Firm Discriminates Against African Americans

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A class action lawsuit claims that Edward Jones discriminates against African Americans by hiring black financial advisors less often and giving them fewer career advancement opportunities than white employees.

Plaintiff Wayne Bland says he was employed at Edward Jones, an investment firm, as a financial advisor between November 2014 and March 2016.

He claims that during his career there, he was discriminated against because of his race — he says that he and other black financial advisors were given fewer career advancement opportunities than their white counterparts.

The plaintiff seeks damages for himself and all similarly affected Edward Jones financial advisors.

The Edward Jones class action lawsuit claims that company-wide, Edward Jones has policies that disadvantage black employees.

Bland alleges that the company uses “policies and practices regarding training, compensation, partnerships, and assignment of territories, business operations and sales support that unlawfully segregate its workforce and deny African Americans the income and advancement opportunities because of their race.”

To support his claim that the company discriminates on the basis of race, the Edward Jones class action lawsuit points to their hiring statistics, stating that Edward Jones is less diverse than comparable companies. Allegedly, approximately 94 percent of Edward Jones financial advisors are white.

Bland goes on to state that the other six percent represent all racial minorities in Edward Jone’s hiring, not just African Americans. The Edward Jones class action lawsuit alleges that this lags behind the national average, 21 percent of financial advisors are non-white and African Americans make up 8.1 percent of financial advisors.

In his Edward Jones racial discrimination class action lawsuit, Bland goes on to claim that once Edward Jones does hire an African American financial advisor, they do not give them the same opportunities for career advancement and income that they give white financial advisors.

Allegedly, the company provides a company-wide training program for all new financial advisors that is supposed to provide all new financial advisors with the same start, putting them on equal footing as they begin their careers with the company, when in fact the program disadvantages African Americans from the beginning of their time with the company.

The plaintiff claims that advisors are assigned one of two paths — to be a stand-alone adverse working from home, or to be a “Legacy” or “Goodknight” partnership, which gives an advisor an office in the building and mentorship, and an agreement to share assets with an established adverse.

Bland says the “Legacy” and “Goodknight” partnerships set advisors up for success for the rest of their careers, noting that the advisors in these partnerships have an 80 percent success rate, double the success rate of advisors not given these partnerships.

The Edward Jones financial advisor discrimination class action lawsuit states that the second of the two paths provides an advisor with significantly more support from the company than the first path, and that African Americans are “disproportionately excluded from the Legacy and GoodKnight programs, to their distinct disadvantage.”

Bland claims that even when African Americans are admitted to the programs, they are given significantly less support than their white peers.

According to the Edward Jones racial discrimination class action lawsuit, the company also “race matches” advisors with territories. Bland claims that as parts of the country inhabited by white clients are often more affluent than those inhabited by African American and other minority clients, systemically placing African American advisors in less affluent territories disadvantages them financially, as they have few investment opportunities.

Bland is represented by Linda D. Friedman, Suzanne E. Bish, and George S. Robot of Stowell & Friedman LTD.

The Edward Jones Employee Racial Discrimination Class Action Lawsuit is Wayne Bland v. Edward D. Jones & Co LP, et al., Case No. 1:18-cv-03673, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.