WMATA Employee’s Race Bias Suit Not Part of Union Grievance Pact

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority must face a Black employee’s discrimination lawsuit, because the claims she asserts weren’t covered by a grievance settlement between WMATA and her union, the DC Circuit ruled Friday.

The unanimous decision turned on the “fundamentally distinct” claims alleged by the senior transit planner in her Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act lawsuit and those pursued by Local 2 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union in the grievance proceeding it brought on her behalf. The ruling also reaffirms US Supreme Court precedent that any potential waiver by a union of a ...