Delay, Retaliation, and the Legal Process

Abstract

On May 13,1966, the CEJO officially filed its class action lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in promotion and hiring by ACIPCO.¹ After waiting nearly a year to take any action, and prior to hearing any evidence in the case, Judge Seybourne Lynne dismissed the case in March of 1967, claiming that the EEOC had not made a sufficient attempt to reach an out-of-court agreement between the company and the workers. Such action, Lynne argued, was required before the EEOC could grant a “right to sue.” Citing another recent employment suit, Dent v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, the Fifth Circuit reversed Lynne’s ruling and ordered the case reinstated in 1969.² This decision set the stage, finally, for substantive hearings, and in 1970, some seven years after the committee began its appeals to the federal government—and four years after it filed the initial lawsuit—those hearings commenced.³ It would not be until 1971 that the initial testimony in the case was heard. Another three years later, following a series of appellate decisions, it seemed that a final settlement had been reached, but there would actually be another ten years of legal proceedings before a final agreement was reached.⁴ The case was sufficiently circuitous that, in 1974, Justice Tuttle of the Fifth Circuit was already lamenting the long and complex opinion that its drawn-out history necessitated.