Custodian ‘Abandoned’ by U.S. In Discrimination Suit

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — With Democrats in Congress criticizing the Bush administration’s record on enforcing anti-discrimination laws, a New York City school custodian yesterday told lawmakers that the Justice Department had “abandoned” her and other female employees in a legal fight over hiring practices.

“I trusted the Justice Department, and then it betrayed and abandoned me and many others,” the custodian, Janet Caldero, said in testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee. Ms. Caldero, 54, has worked in the city’s public schools for 15 years, and for the last two years at a junior high school in Queens, which she and her attorney asked not be identified.

Ms. Caldero and about two dozen other female custodians are litigants in an anti-discrimination case that the Justice Department initiated against the city during the Clinton administration. Upon a settlement in 2000, she and other litigants received permanent employment or retroactive seniority, including a pay raise and added benefits. But then in 2002, Ms. Caldero said, the Justice Department under President Bush switched sides and has since argued that the awards that she and other women custodians received unfairly discriminated against white male custodians, who had objected to the settlement.

Under a split ruling issued by a federal district judge in 2006, Ms. Caldero said her job is safe, but if the government wins on appeal, she said she fears she could be forced to sell her home. She is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a statement, a Justice Department did not address Ms. Caldero’s case but said the administration is committed to “ensuring that actual, identified victims of discrimination” receive relief. Ms. Caldero’s testimony yesterday came as Democratic lawmakers berated a senior Justice Department official over the federal government’s efforts to enforce civil rights employment laws.

Led by the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the lawmakers criticized the department’s Civil Rights Division for prosecuting just a fraction — 1% to 2% — of the public employment complaints it receives from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They also suggested the department was focusing too much on so-called “reverse discrimination” cases brought by white males, instead of cases brought by members of historically disadvantaged groups.

A deputy assistant attorney general, Asheesh Agarwal, defended the Justice Department’s record, saying the number of cases that it pursued matched closely with the number brought during the second term of the Clinton administration.

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, scoffed at that explanation. “The Clinton administration didn’t leave me breathless either,” he said, drawing laughter from the hearing room audience, “so telling me you’re not doing any worse than them does nothing for me whatsoever.”


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