Black Arkansas BCBS Worker Fails With Race Bias Claim

A market service representative can’t show Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield passed her over for promotion because she is black, the Eighth Circuit ruled March 22.

Corrie Nelson was qualified for ABCBS’s newly created “manager of operations for the Southeast region and Pine Bluff office” position. She also is a member of a protected class under federal race discrimination law and was denied a job that went to a white woman. That’s enough to establish an inference of racial bias, the appeals court said.

But ABCBS countered that it selected Melissa Watkins for the position instead of Nelson because ...