Federal Court Holds EEOC May Subpoena Records For "Overall" Conditions In the Workplace

The federal court of appeals that sits in Chicago issued a decision today that lets the EEOC subpoena records relating to hiring practices from an employer (Konica Minolta) accused of wrongful termination in the employee's EEOC charge.  The decision serves as a lesson to employers about the broad subpoena power of the EEOC.  The only relevant facts are that Konica Minolta fired a minority employee ("Thompson") for poor sales performance after he had worked for 8 months.  He filed a charge alleging his firing was disparate treatment because of his race.  The EEOC then asked and later subpoenaed records of Konica Minolta's hiring practices.  

As a side note, the facts that led the EEOC to seek the hiring practices records were that it:

discovered that there were only six blacks employed at Konica, out of 120 total employees in the identified facilities, and all six were employed in Tinley Park. Of the approximately 100 employees at the other locations, only one was a person of color. The EEOC also learned that there were two sales teams at the Tinley Park facility, and those teams were segregated largely along racial lines. Thompson’s team was made up of five black employees and two white employees.

These facts were not, strictly speaking, necessary to the court's decision but they do show the EEOC's concern was not completely irrational, either.  The employer took the position that information on hiring practices in a termination claim was not relevant. The court disagreed, saying:

When the EEOC investigates a charge of race discrimination for purposes of Title VII, it is authorized to consider whether the overall conditions in a workplace support the complaining employee’s allegations. Racial discrimination is “by definition class discrimination,” and information concerning whether an employer discriminated against other members of the same class for the purposes of hiring or job classification may cast light on whether an individual person suffered discrimination. For that reason, the EEOC is authorized to subpoena “evidence concerning employment practices other than those specifically charged by complainants” in the course of its investigation.

* * * 

The Commission is entitled generally to investigate employers within its jurisdiction to see if there is a prohibited pattern or practice of discrimination. Here, Thompson alleged both a specific instance and such a pattern of race discrimination. He asserted that he was treated differently from white co-workers in the “terms and conditions” of his employment, and that he was unequally disciplined for not meeting a sales quota. It is true that Thompson was not saying that Konica had refused to hire him, but that does not make hiring data irrelevant. The question under Shell Oil and its progeny is not whether Thompson specifically alleged discrimination in hiring, but instead is whether information regarding Konica’s hiring practices will “cast light” on Thompson’s race discrimination complaint.

(I've omitted citations to other court decisions from these quotes.)