NEW ORLEANS Mar 30, 2005 — New Orleans' first black district attorney discriminated against 43 whites when he fired them en masse and replaced them with blacks upon taking office in 2003, a federal jury decided Wednesday. The jury awarded the employees about $1.8 million in back pay and damages.
The jury made up of eight whites and two blacks returned the unanimous verdict in the third day of deliberations in the racial discrimination case against District Attorney Eddie Jordan.
Jordan acknowledged he wanted to make the office more reflective of the city's racial makeup, but denied he fired whites just because they are white. In fact, he said, he did not know the race of the people fired.
Under U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval's instructions, jurors had to find Jordan liable if they concluded the firings were racially motivated. The law bars the mass firing of a specific group, even if the intent is to create diversity.
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"We thought the facts as well as the law favored us. I still maintain that I did not use race as a factor in my hiring practices," he said.
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