Bay Area Solar Panel Company Forced to Pay Settlement for Racial Discrimination Lawsuit

Fidelity Home Energy Inc. and successor NorCal Home Systems Inc. out of Concord were forced to pay a settlement for allegedly denying service to any that management deemed likely to be Indian or Middle Eastern based on their names. The Bay Area solar panel installation company will settle the racial discrimination lawsuit with a $350,000 settlement paid to a former employee. The terms of the settlement also require the company to hire a consultant to assist them in changing company policies and practices in violation of the law.

NorCal Home Systems' $350,000 settlement is paid to Ayesha Faiz. Faiz, who is of Afghan origin, learned within a week of starting her job as a telemarketing supervisor at the company that potential customers that sounded Middle Eastern or Indian were regularly rejected for home energy system sales appointments.

Lawsuit Alleged Racial Discrimination was Standard Practice:

According to court documents, Faiz watched as supervisors purposefully tagged customer records in the company's internal databases and placed them on a "do not call" list. Faiz claims the company forced her to reject the potential customers multiple times per week. Additionally, her supervisor's forced her to instruct her subordinates to practice the same discriminatory behavior towards the potential customers who had Middle Eastern-sounding or Indian-sounding names.

At one point during her employment, Faiz saw a note stuck on a worker's computer that stated clearly, "NO INDIANS." Some employees at the solar panel installation company wrote notes on the digital customer files within the database for anyone they thought were probably Middle Eastern or Indian. Comments on the customer files ranged from "Indian Name!" to "We Won't Run This." The company denies the allegations Faiz made in the lawsuit. They insist that they did nothing wrong and that they are moving forward with their business practices as is.

Identifying Discriminatory Practices in the Workplace:

Yet Faiz was forced to discriminate against potential customers of her own national origin. It was so distressing for her that after a few weeks, she quit the job that required active discrimination daily. She could not handle working for a company that refused service to a particular ethnicity and went out of their way to single them out and separate them from the list of possible customers. The EEOC determined this constituted a hostile work environment in violation of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination by employers based on national origin.

The settlement, a three-year consent decree, requires Fidelity and NorCal to provide money to Faiz for damages and hire an EEO consultant to assist in revising NorCal's policies and practices. NorCal is also required to update their databases and remove any notes or information used to "screen" potential customers by ethnicity or national origin.

If you need to file a racial discrimination lawsuit or if you need to discuss other employment law violations, don't hesitate to get in touch with Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik DeBlouw LLP. Experienced employment law attorneys are ready to assist you in any one of various law firm offices located in San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside, and Chicago.