Desert Schools FCU has settled a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging the credit union discriminated by favoring Caucasian, Mormon employees in promotional decisions in the East Valley, to the exclusion of African-American and non-Mormon employees.
"The EEOC recently initiated settlement negotiations following a series of depositions that Desert Schools' management believes demonstrated the EEOC's case lacked merit," the credit union said in a statement. "Although the EEOC has pursued this matter for nearly four years, the commission dropped its initial settlement demand by almost two thirds."
Desert Schools said that while it believed the case lacked merit, it settled the case in "the best interests of members" due to the costs associated with litigating against a "large governmental agency."
"We view the significant drop in the EEOC's settlement demands over the last few weeks as a concession that they would have had a very difficult time proving their case," said VP-Human Resouces David Strachan. "The bottom line is that it would have been fiscally irresponsible not to entertain their lowered demand. This case was very expensive to litigate because the EEOC uses aggressive litigation tactics."
DSFCU said a trial was at least a year away and that the mounting legal expenses and employee hours involved, in addition to costs related to copying "tens of thousands of documents demanded by the EEOC" made the settlement the best decision.
