HO! HO! HO! DID EEOC JUST IMPROPERLY GIFT $617,436 TO A LAW FIRM?

The newest bundle of EEOC decisions included a decision with very good news along with some troubling news.  When the Postal Service reorganized some years ago, hundreds of employees protected by the Rehabilitation Act thought it discriminated against them based on their disability when they were subjected to: (1) withdrawals of their reasonable accommodations; (2) hostile work environments; and (3) disclosures of confidential medical information. They filed a complaint as a group with EEOC and when it found in their favor, their lawyers asked for $17,215,063.60 in attorney fees. EEOC reduced that claim to $4,803,493.81 due to a lack of evidence proving the lawyers worked the hours they claimed, among other reasons. But it seems to us they were still overpaid because EEOC is refusing to follow the opinion of the federal D.C. Court of Appeals or the pronouncements of the Attorney General.

We have written about this before because we believe that employees and unions are in jeopardy of losing the right to get attorney fees if they continue to claim hourly rates that the public will not accept once some right-wing politician decides to make this a public issue. The sound bites would just be too easy to draft. “Union Attorneys Gets Five Times More In Fees Than Client Got In Damages!” “Union Attorney Gets Paid $1,000 An Hour By The Feds!” “Feds Make Union Attorney Instant Millionaire!” and “Dollars For Protecting Homeland Sent to Union Instead!”

If EEOC wants to continue to encourage attorneys to represent employees in discrimination cases, then it needs to take a very defensible approach to awarding them. It failed to do so in Complainants, v. Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General, United States Postal Service, EEOC Appeal No. 2020002159 (2022).

The Commission decided to let the seven lawyers from a D.C. law firm who claimed they worked on this case receive higher fees for each hour of work than the law seems to allow. EEOC reimbursed them using the Laffey Matrix rather than the Fitzpatrick Matrix.  It did so even though the federal DC Court of Appeals has said the Laffey Matrix is defective and Attorney General Garland has pronounced that the Fitzpatrick Matrix is the one that should be used. In this Postal case using the Laffey rate resulted in the DC attorneys being overpaid by over $600,000.00

Arbitrators and any other agencies granting attorney fees in federal employee cases also need to think defensively lest they wind up featured in a Washington post story entitled, “Arbitrator Takes Money From Sick Veterans to Fund Union.”  The person who tries to defend a Laffey Matrix payment in those circumstances is going to be defenseless in light of the court and Attorney General’s positions. Perhaps it is time the EEOC Inspector General is notified of the Commission’s decision to ignore law.

 

About AdminUN

FEDSMILL staff has over 40 years of federal sector labor relations experience on the union as well as management side of the table and even some time as a neutral.
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