A decade after the U.S. Justice Department and the city’s Department of Education settled a lawsuit over the dearth of minority custodians hired to maintain the city’s schools, a federal judge is trying to correct the unconstitutional discrimination against white male employees that resulted.

The terms of the settlement, reached in 1998, provided that some 59 employment offers to black, Hispanic, Asian, and female custodians would include certain additional benefits, including backdated seniority. The problem with that, a federal judge in Brooklyn, Frederic Block, first ruled in 2006, is that it meant that white male employees would be the first to lose their jobs in times of layoff.

Backdated seniority was acceptable for new minority employees who had previously tried to get hired but had been turned away due to discrimination by city school officials. But Judge Block ruled that those added benefits could not constitutionally go to new hires who were not personally discriminated against but had been given jobs to help further integrate the custodian workforce. For nearly two years now, the Justice Department and the city’s Education Department have been poring over the court record to try to determine which of those 59 hires deserved the retroactive seniority. In a decision last week, Judge Block stripped more of those hires of seniority benefits.

In the education department, custodians are the equivalent of building superintendents.