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Atlanta-Fulton Litigants Get $18-Million SettlementAlmost four years after nine upper-management librarians filed a reverse-discrimination suit against the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, the Fulton County Commission has agreed to an $18-million settlement, which is being paid in three installments. Because the settlement is more than half the library system’s $29-million budget for FY 2003, spreading the settlement over the course of a year “was the best we could do,” commission Chair Karen Handel said in the January 8 Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Filed in 2000, the suit contended that eight white women were demoted from senior management to branch administration because trustees wanted more people of color in positions of authority. The complaint of a ninth plaintiff who is African American, Monica Foderingham-Brown, was removed early in the case because a lower-court judge dismissed her claim that she was demoted for objecting to the white librarians’ reassignments. Named as defendants were AFPL Director Mary Kaye Hooker, then–board Chair William McClure, and two other individuals who are no longer trustees. McClure still serves on the board and Hooker continues on as director. According to the website of a group of dissident staffers, Atlantans for Progressive Libraries, the agreement was reached in late December, some six weeks after Handel began chairing the commission. The website states that the AFPL group’s goal is “to create, through new legislation, a completely different—and totally advisory—board.” In October, a like-minded taxpayers’ group called for the entire board’s resignation. A second suit filed in December is still pending. Plaintiffs Maureen Kelly and Mary Starck, two of the eight reassigned librarians, claim that trustees have retaliated against them through denial of career advancement because they have been “outspoken leaders” in the now-settled case. Posted January 9, 2004. |
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