This is a quite complex case, connected to two others:

In May 1999, the EEOC filed a lawsuit (EEOC v Rent-A-Center, No 99-2427-TU-V) in Memphis, Tennessee, charging that RAC, when it acquired a competitor named Rentronics, terminated female employees and refused to hire female applicants in Tennessee and Arkansas because of their sex.

In 2000, female employees filed two cases. One was in Kansas City (MO), filed by two women who claimed individual bias, and ordered to mandatory arbitration by the judge there. Bunch v. Rent-A-Center, 00-0364-CV-W-3. No class claims were part of the arbitration, which would have ended that case. In addition, in August 2000, 21 female employees, later joined by 6 others, filed a nationwide class action (Wilfong v Rent-A-Center, No 00-680-DRH) in East St. Louis, Illinois, claiming that, after Renters Choice acquired 1,400 RAC stores and assumed the name of RAC, the new RAC systematically eliminated women from its workforce. The class complaint alleged that RAC: got rid of job classifications previously held by women; imposed an unfair weight-lifting requirement; harassed and unfairly disciplined female employees; assigned them cleaning and clerical duties; demoted and failed to promote them; refused to hire them; and either discharged them or forced them to resign.

The EEOC certified that the Illinois case is of general public importance and asked to intervene, which the District Court for the Southern District of Illinois allowed on May 14, 2001. With the support of the EEOC, the Wilfong private plaintiffs moved for certification of their case as a class action on November 1, 2001 and submitted over 300 sworn statements from discrimination victims and witnesses to support their motion.

Just one day before the submission of the class certification motion in the Illinois (Wilfong) case, in the Kansas City (Bunch) case, RAC and the two women submitted a proposed $12.2 million settlement that was designed to dispose of all claims by female employees and applicants all over the country, including those in the EEOC's Illinois and Tennessee cases. The Kansas City case had no class element going into arbitration. It seems that this settlement was entered by the district court, because the next thing we know is that the EEOC filed papers in front of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals opposing the Bunch class settlement. We don't know what happened to that motion -- whether it was granted, denied, or simply not ruled on. In any event, the parties of all the suits settled all three cases by the entry of a consent decree in the Illinois case in June 2002, which was ultimately approved in October 2002. The decree included non-discrimination and non-retaliation clauses, required the posting and distribution of a written Title VII policy, and required training of all employees on what constitutes sexual discrimination. Rent-A-Center also agreed to comply with hiring criteria, including advertising in venues targeted to female job applicants. The consent decree also called for the creation of the job of Vice President of Human Resources and the creation of a professional Human Resources department. The defendant agreed to provide quarterly reports to a third-party consultant, the class counsel and to the EEOC. The injunctive parts of the decree had a four-year term. In the event of non-compliance, the decree called for a non-court dispute resolution process, including the utilization of a special master, and court enforcement in case of ongoing dispute. In addition, the defendant agreed to pay $47,000,000 to the class, of which over $11,000,000 constituted compensation for fees and costs.

Margo Schlanger - 08/01/2008


compress summary