Cementing a high-profile loss for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a Maryland federal judge has awarded close to $1 million in fees to the agency’s adversaries, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and client Freeman Co.
After chiding the agency for bungling its case, U.S. District Judge Roger Titus in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Friday ordered the EEOC to cover nearly $939,000 in Akin Gump’s fees. The EEOC had sued Freeman in 2009 as part of a broader push to scrutinize hiring policies that rely on criminal record checks. The lawsuit accused the Dallas-based event-planning company of using background checks in a way that disproportionately screened out black job applicants, thus violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
