Compliance called it illegal – then told leadership to just reword it
A federal appeals court has upheld a $3.39 million verdict against a transportation company whose president directed HR to hire only white candidates.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in a decision filed on April 7, affirmed the full jury award in a case involving Dimerco Express USA Corp., finding that the company's racially discriminatory hiring practices were orchestrated by its top executive and carried out through its human resources department.
The case began in 2019, when Kenny Faulk, a Black man with both a bachelor's and a master's degree in business administration, applied for an account executive role at the Atlanta office of Dimerco Express USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Taiwan-based Dimerco Express Group. The company's HR manager and the Atlanta branch manager offered Faulk the position at $90,000 a year, pending a background check.
That check turned up a 2014 misdemeanor conviction for disorderly conduct. The Atlanta branch manager flagged the result in an email to the HR manager and copied Herbert Liou, the president of the U.S. subsidiary. Attached to the email was a screenshot that also identified Faulk as Black. Liou instructed HR to pull the offer.
The problem was not the background check. According to evidence presented at trial, Liou had been steering the company's hiring toward a whites-only policy since taking the role of president the year before. His...
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