Mariela Villarreal

In Gonzales v. Police Department, City of San Jose, California (9th Cir. 1990) 901 F.2d 758, our attorneys, representing the employee, won a published reversal of the district court’s denial of an employee’s discrimination claims. The employee, a Hispanic, claimed he was skipped over for promotion because of his race. He pointed to the fact that every time he was denied promotion, his employer failed to follow its affirmative action program designed to encourage the promotion of minorities. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the City of San Jose’s failure to follow its own affirmative action program constituted significant evidence in a Title VII suit against it. The Court also called into doubt the relevance of the City’s post-lawsuit promotion of other minority employees, finding that “curative measures simply do not tend to prove that a prior violation did not occur.”