A federal judge ruled on Monday that the civil rights lawsuit by a Black attorney who was fired in 2023 from a high position at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) can proceed with his claims of racial discrimination and retaliation.
Oscar Hampton, formerly a regional solicitor for the Department in Philadelphia, has been fighting his demotion and eventual dismissal for two years, first internally, and then through a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Before his firing in September 2023, Hampton was a top civil litigator who had worked at DOL since 1989 and led his office’s legal team to victory in an overtime-pay case with a jury verdict award of $22 million for 7,500 workers at battery maker East Penn, one of the largest verdicts in the department’s history.
But even as he presided over that complex employment law case, Hampton alleges that he faced retaliation from white supervisors for complaining about disparate treatment, systemic discrimination and a hostile work environment that he and other Black lawyers were contending with at the DOL.
His lawsuit claims that in response to his complaints, his supervisors launched an investigation into his management style, made false and unsubstantiated allegations against him, demoted him, unfairly denied him pay and bonuses, and damaged his professional reputation before ultimately terminating him.
Hampton seeks to get his job back, to be awarded compensatory and punitive damages, and for injunctive relief that will force the DOL to revamp its anti-discrimination policies and procedures.
According to his complaint, throughout his employment certain white attorneys targeted Hampton and other Black managers with racist and biased complaints based on “racial tropes,” complaining that Hampton was “overbearing,” “intimidating,” “confrontational,” and “aggressive” as an attorney and manager.
One white attorney, Judson Dean, referred to the Black female attorneys who worked under Hampton as his “flying monkeys,” and leveled unfounded accusations of incompetence against them, the complaint says.
Mr. Dean later complained that Hampton “just powers over people. Oscar [Hampton] is physically imposing and has one of the deepest and loudest voices,” which the lawsuit deemed to be “invoking the racist stereotype that Mr. Hampton was a big, scary, Black man.”
When Hampton complained to his direct supervisor Stanley Keen, the deputy solicitor for regional enforcement, about such racial slurs and other harassing and discriminatory conduct, Keen took no steps to investigate or correct it, in violation of DOL policies, he claims.
Keen “repeatedly showed his animus towards Black employees and their complaints,” and treated them differently than white employees, Hampton alleges. For instance, Keen micromanaged the pleadings and strategy for cases brought by Black attorneys, while not doing the same to white attorneys.
His supervisors also resented Hampton’s comments about the disproportionately low numbers of Black attorneys in the department, and demurred when he asked them to produce demographic data on employees to analyze the issue, the lawsuit claims.
Hampton says that Keen and other white attorneys engaged in a campaign to remove him from his job after he raised concerns in September 2021 to Keen and Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda about a Black attorney manager who was being subjected to discrimination.
Nanda directed Keen to investigate the matter, but he did not, the complaint says. Instead, Keen asked Dean to solicit complaints from other attorneys to support a “discriminatory and retaliatory investigation” into Hampton.
That internal investigation over the next two years found that Hampton had bullied his staff and created a toxic environment where his subordinates feared reprisal for disagreeing with him and pursuing suspected violations of laws and regulations.
A dozen of his subordinates claimed in an anonymous employee survey that at least 15 attorneys had left the solicitor’s office due to Hampton’s rude, abusive and demeaning behavior, according to the defendants’ partial motion to dismiss filed in June.
A separate audit also concluded that Hampton had misused his government travel card, finding $36,000 in “questionable transactions” between 2016 and 2020, including excess cash advances and unauthorized purchases. It also found that Hampton had fallen behind on payments on the card.
In October of 2022, a Hispanic attorney alleged that Hampton was retaliating against her for participating in the investigation of his management practices. She said he had asked her if she had talked to investigators and then told her, “You let me know where you stand,” which made her feel threatened.
Later that month, the DOL sent Hampton a Notice of Proposed Removal, based on his unauthorized use of the credit card and “Conduct Unbecoming.”
In November of 2022, he was removed from his position as the regional solicitor in Philadelphia, and sent to a field office detail at DOL headquarters in Washington, D.C., while the investigation into his alleged harassment of the female subordinate continued. He was barred from having contact with his employees.
Hampton complained that he “essentially was demoted to a staff attorney,” according to the DOL investigation report.
However he was allowed to continue working on the high-profile East Penn case, as he was the lead trial attorney and had a good rapport with the other attorneys preparing the case for trial.
In December of 2022 Hampton was given low marks for “leading people” in an otherwise good performance review, which DOL officials say resulted in him not receiving as high a salary bonus and pay bump as he might have.
In his complaint, Hampton argues the lower pay he received is evidence of disparate treatment and racial discrimination, as white regional solicitors who did similar work, but did not win nearly as much in legal settlements as he did, were paid more.
In September of 2023, Hampton was terminated from DOL altogether, in a notice that stated he should be removed from federal service due to the results of the investigation and “other alleged misconduct.”
In October of 2023, the DOL’s Administrative Review Board issued its final decision regarding the racial discrimination complaint Hampton had filed with the department’s Civil Rights Center in February. The board found “Complainant failed to establish that he was subjected to disparate treatment or a hostile environment based on his race, sex, and/or reprisal for prior EEO [equal employment opportunity] activity,” and granted him no relief.
In his amended legal complaint filed in March, Hampton says the allegations against him and the reasons proffered for his firing are “unfounded, false and/or pretext for discrimination.”
His complaint notes that during the DOL investigation, employees repeatedly testified about his “excellent performance, dedication to DOL’s mission, good management, and positive treatment of employees”, and that he “did not create a fear of retaliation.”
He further argues that “employees also testified about the explicit racism they had observed towards Mr. Hampton. Eight out of nine managers in Region III testified in favor of Mr. Hampton. The testimony of all the other managers, as well as other employees, no matter how positive, was ignored.”
The lawsuit cites one senior Black manager who testified about the racism she observed DOL subjecting Mr. Hampton to, and … that at DOL, she “was met with open hostility and insubordination and that is the experience that I have heard with other managers of color in the Department.”
A white male manager also testified about Hampton that, “He likes attorneys who work hard, and that would gain you favor. He likes attorneys who place the interest of the people who we are trying to protect through the Wage and Hour laws and the health and safety, anti-discrimination laws, and the well-being of American workers over our personal interests,” and that, “If you are doing well in your program areas, he will back you up and support you. He likes to win; and we win. We have an impressive region; our attorneys work hard and get excellent results. I admire them.”
The white manager also testified that he “absolutely [does] not” fear reprisal.
In his order this week, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich granted part of the defendants’ motion to dismiss some of Hampton’s discrimination claims, finding that Hampton “failed to plead facts sufficient to support a sex discrimination claim.”
But the judge denied the DOL’s effort to dismiss Hampton’s color-based discrimination claim and his wage-based discrimination claim, finding, “Hampton alleges that white employees occupying his same job position received higher bonuses, even though he had accomplished more and won larger judgments in court. At this stage, that is enough to support an inference that the Department reduced his bonus due to discriminatory intent.”
The Department of Labor has until Dec. 16 to answer Hampton’s complaint.
