MONDAY, AUGUST 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
severity and f requency of this
conduct and w hether t he
supervisors had engaged in
similar conduct in the past,” he
said. “Indeed, an agency could b e
held liable if it fails to discipline
the s upervisor a nd he engages in
subsequent s imilar misconduct
in the future.”
The White House did not
respond to requests for comment.
All three EEOC c ommissioners
were unavailable t o answer
questions, according to an agency
spokesperson, even by email.
That i ncludes the c hair, Janet
Dhillon, a Trump appointee who
was first asked for comment on
July 24.
When the EEOC sued Marion’s
Cleaners in Metairie, La., last year
in a “go back to Mexico” case,
Rudy Sustaita, the agency’s
regional attorney for the Houston
District Office, said, “ No p erson
deserves t o be verbally a nd
physically accosted a nd
humiliated merely because o f
being born in a particular country
or being o f a particular race.”
It’s a lesson for Trump.
[email protected]shift l eader called Latino
employees r acial s lurs including
“ ‘tacos,’ and ‘ burritos’ and
repeatedly told t hem to ‘go back
to Mexico.’ ”
l A 2010 agreement with the
Sahara Hotel & Casino in Las
Vegas to pay $100,000 because
“Sahara’s s upervisors a nd
coworkers continuously b elittled
and h arassed Ezzat Elias...
because of his Egyptian heritage.
The alleged harassers openly and
continually subjected E lias to
derogatory comments, such a s
‘Go back to Egypt.’ ”
The law applies t o all
employees i n the private and
public sectors, but supervisors
should b e held t o a higher
standard. James M. Eisenmann,
former executive director of the
Merit Systems Protection Board,
a quasi-judicial a gency that
protects against prohibited
personnel practices in the f ederal
workplace, s aid a supervisor who
used Trump’s l anguage could face
discipline ranging from a verbal
warning to termination.
“The level o f discipline, of
course, would depend on theincluding “humiliating threats of
arrest if they did not speak
English a nd were told t o go b ack
to the Philippines.”
l A 2009 agreement with
Wheeler Construction, i n Phoenix
to pay $325,000 because of verbal
harassment against two
employees t hat included telling
them to go b ack to Mexico. One of
the e mployees was b orn in t he
United States (as were t hree o f
the f our c ongresswomen Trump
targeted).
l A 2011 agreement with New
York University, described b y the
EEOC as “the l argest private
university in the United States
and one of New York City’s ten
biggest e mployers,” to pay
$210,000 b ecause a library
mailroom s upervisor “regularly
addressed the e mployee, a native
of Ghana, with slurs such a s
‘monkey’ and ‘gorilla’ and insults
such as ‘go back to your cage.’ ”
l A 2011 agreement with
Simon Property Group, a national
real estate company that o wned a
Caesars Palace s hopping mall in
Las Vegas, to pay $125,
because a white housekeepinghead of the E EOC.
Private sector employees have
successfully taken action against
those who make or tolerate
similar comments. A Federal
Insider review of EEOC
documents shows the agency has
won l awsuit s ettlements on
behalf of employees i n at l east a
dozen cases over the p ast decade,
in part because a supervisor or
colleague said “go back” to an
employee in a bigoted c ontext.
According t o EEOC
documents, the settlements that
hit e mployers the h ardest
include:
l A 2010 agreement with
Elmer W. Davis Inc., a Rochester,
N.Y., roofing contractor, to pay
$1 million to African A merican
employees b ecause “ they w ere
constantly subjected to racial
slurs b y their white foremen”
including ‘A ll n----rs should g et o n
a boat and go b ack t o Africa.’ ”
l A 2012 agreement with
Delano Regional Medical Center,
in Delano, Calif., to pay $975,
because Filipino American
hospital staffers s uffered a
“hostile work environment,”intimidating, hostile or offensive
working environment, interfere
with work performance, o r
negatively affect job
opportunities. Examples of
potentially unlawful c onduct
include insults, taunting, or
ethnic epithets, s uch as making
fun o f a person’s f oreign accent or
comments like, ‘Go back to where
you came f rom,’ whether made b y
supervisors o r by co-workers.”
When Trump tweeted that
Democratic Reps. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), R ashida
Tlaib ( Mich.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.)
and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.)
should “ go b ack and help fix the
totally broken and crime i nfested
places f rom which they came,” he
used the k ind of racially offensive
language that has led to hefty
fines, as EEOC employment
discrimination cases h ave
shown.
The congresswomen can’t
complain to the EEOC because
Trump i sn’t t heir boss — he has
no authority o ver the legislative
branch and the c ongresswomen,
though he sets t he tone for the
government and appoints theWhile President
Trump’s r emark
that four
congresswomen of
color should “ go
back” t o
their ancestral
countries was
rightly
condemned as
racist and wrong,
similar comments
by others have generated far
more serious consequences.
Language like Trump u sed is
against the l aw i n the workplace.
Supervisors or colleagues who
target co-workers with verbal
abuse, a nd o rganizations that
allow it, c an end up in c ourt,
facing big fines.
The Equal Employment
Opportunity C ommission
(EEOC) c ites words similar to
Trump’s i n a previously
issued document explaining
employment h arassment based
on national origin:
“Ethnic slurs a nd other verbal
or physical conduct because o f
nationality are illegal i f they are
severe or pervasive and create an
BY ANU NARAYANSWAMY,
KATE RABINOWITZ,
HAILEY FUCHS
AND MICHELLE YE HEE LEEAbout a fifth of donors have
given to more t han one Democrat-
ic presidential nominee i n the f irst
six m onths o f this year, pointing to
the difficulty candidates face dis-
tinguishing themselves among
those giving small amounts at a
time.
That revelation comes accord-
ing to an analysis of ActBlue data,
released by the Federal Election
Commission this week. ActBlue is
an online fundraising platform
used by all major Democratic
presidential candidates. The data
released Thursday offers an in-
depth look at how small-dollar,
grass-roots donors are shaping t he
Democratic primary.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
raised the m ost money from small
donors, collecting $30 million
from 746,000 contributors, the
highest of any presidential candi-
date.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
brought in the second-highest
haul, raising $17 million from
410,000 individuals. Pete Butt-
igieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.,
came in third, raising $15 million
from 376,000 donors.
A handful of donors gave to at
least 20 candidates in the first six
months of 2019, the ActBlue data
shows. Contributions generally
ranged from $1 to $20 per candi-
date, t hough many donated s ignif-
icantly m ore t o their favorites.
Robert Neill Jr., 61, an investor,
farmer and real estate broker, gave
between $1 and $5 t o 20 D emocrat-
ic candidates. He also contributed
to the campaign of former Massa-
chusetts governor Bill Weld,Trump’s l ong-shot Republican chal-
lenger.
In an interview, he said he want-
ed to give some of the “second-tier
candidates,” like Washington Gov.
Jay Inslee and Sen. Cory Booker
(N.J.), a shot to show their stuff on
the d ebate stage.
Neill plans t o give a larger dona-
tion to the Democratic Party’s
eventual nominee, but for now,
the undecided, longtime Demo-
cratic voter from C arrollton, Miss.,
wants to hear from as many peo-
ple as p ossible.
“I like that Tulsi Gabbard is
looking at the military industrial
complex. She’s voicing some
things that no one has brought up
since Dwight E isenhower,” he said
about the congresswoman from
Hawaii. “There are just a lot of
different issues, a lot of issues on
the t able. E ach of the c andidates is
bringing s ome of their unique p er-
spectives on t hat.”
Michael Komblevicz, 44, a sales
manager for a telecommunications
company in Spokane Valley, Wash.,has a very different motivation.
Komblevicz, a Republican, gave
widely because he believes a
crowded Democratic field will be a
“total m ess” f or the party, as i t was
for the GOP in 2016. He gave $1 to
20 Democratic candidates to bol-
ster their chances of meeting the
party’s fundraising threshold to
appear on the Democratic debate
stage.
“Honestly, politics is gross,” he
said. “It’s like watching a sporting
event to me.”
Komblevicz did not vote for
President Trump in 2016. He says
he is not sure whom he will sup-
port in the 2020 general election.
He i s a fan of former vice president
Joe Biden but says Warren is “too
socialist.”
Overall, more than 2.3 million
people donated $200 or less to the
Democratic presidential candi-
dates in t he f irst six m onths of 2019.
These small-dollar contributions
totaled nearly $110 m illion.
Small-dollar donations have
played a big role in the primariesso far, thanks to new rules from
the D emocratic National C ommit-
tee. Unlike in years past, candi-
dates must gather a certain num-
ber of donors to qualify for the
debates. As a result, campaigns
have competed for a base of sup-
porters who give a few dollars at a
time.
Democratic voters interviewed
by The Washington Post say they
are giving differently than i n years
pa st. Rather t han simply donating
to a favorite candidate, they are
offering a few dollars at a time to
help certain people raise t heir pro-
files o r bring their policy i deas to a
broader audience.
That competition may help ex-
plain why, in recent months, many
Democratic candidates who initial-
ly distanced themselves from big
donors have b een holding m ore tra-
ditional fundraisers courting do-
nors who give maximum $2,
checks a t a time.
The only candidate who has
completely shunned courting
wealthy donors at private fund-raisers is Warren. Even so, Warren
drew one of the biggest hauls in
the second quarter, at $19.1 mil-
lion — suggesting a potent small-
dollar donor base for the candi-
dates who can successfully tap
into it.
Earlier this summer, Republi-
cans launched their own small-
dollar fundraising platform,
named WinRed, in an effort to
capitalize o n the p resident’s s mall-
dollar donor base. They modeled
WinRed after A ctBlue, though u n-
like ActBlue, WinRed is a for-prof-
it company.
President Trump has consis-
tently drawn about half or more of
his campaign donations from do-
nors giving less than $200, often
in the form of b uying “ Make A mer-
ica Great Again” merchandise or
responding to a flurry of email or
Facebook advertising appeals by
his reelection campaign.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Small-dollar donors and new rules are reshaping the Democratic primary
Federal
Insider
JOE
DAVIDSON
Talking like Tr ump in the workplace can be costly for you — and your employer
A fifth gave to more than
1 nominee in 2019’s first
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