Chicago seeks settlement over alleged police hiring discrimination

Chicago on Friday proposed a $3.1 million settlement to resolve a federal lawsuit claiming the city discriminated against foreign-born police officer candidates by enforcing a 10-year continuous residency requirement.

The proposal on the settlement came almost immediately after the filing of the civil claim. The lawsuit comes as Chicago recruits new police officers for the first time in three years, and as the police department faces an uproar for the alleged use of lethal force by some of its officers.

"Chicago, through CPD, has pursued policies and practices that discriminate against individuals born outside the United States because of their national origin," the lawsuit said.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, seeks damages, including lost wages, for police candidates who were discriminated against and a court order to change hiring practices.

According to the lawsuit, Masood Khan, born in India, and Glenford Flowers, a native of Belize, passed the police department's written exam in 2006, but their applications were rejected because they had not lived in the United States for 10 years.

At the time, the Chicago Police Department required candidates for potential new hires to have lived 10 years continuously in the U.S. prior to taking the exam. There is an exception for those who were abroad for military service.

The department has since changed the residency requirement to five years, according to the lawsuit.

“The City of Chicago Department of Law and the Chicago Police Department worked cooperatively with the Department of Justice and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on a proposed settlement to resolve claims of employment discrimination that disqualified applicants who lived in the United States for less than 10 years from applying to become police officers,” the city's law office said in a statement.   

“These claims date back to 2006, and the policy was changed in 2011, and the proposed settlement resolves the claims of past discrimination," the statement added. 

In June 2008, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated the cases of Khan and Flowers and found they were subjected to discrimination in hiring on the basis of national origin, in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, according to the lawsuit.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, employers cannot discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

The commission referred the case to the Department of Justice after failing to reach a settlement with the city.

The lawsuit said that Chicago has not demonstrated the residency requirement is necessary, and that the practice has a statistically significant adverse impact on candidates born outside the country.

The Chicago Police Department did not respond directly to the settlement but said that building diversity was key to improving police-community relations.

“Over the past few years, special focus was placed on attracting higher numbers of minority applicants to improve diversity and as a result, historic numbers of African Americans and Latinos will make up the next generation of Chicago Police Officers,” the department said in a statement.

Al Jazeera and Reuters