A leader with the Bloomington-Normal NAACP accused State Farm of retaliation and discrimination on the basis of race and the court threw the case out because she didn’t have sufficient evidence to support her claims.
The case involved NAACP chapter Vice President Carla Campbell-Jackson and the court documents that say she didn’t have evidence are dated Aug. 11, 2023.
She filed the allegation in May of 2016. At the time, Campbell-Jackson worked as a claims section manager for State Farm in Michigan.
In Feb. 2019, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a determination of reasonable cause for Campbell Jackson’s claims.
EEOC records indicated State Farm rejected to settle the matter on June 11, 2019. Through an agency, Campbell-Jackson was asking for $474,000 in back pay and damages. The EEOC also want to reeducate 10 State Farm employees through a “training.”
“It is important to clarify that the allegations outlined are made by a single individual Dr. Carla Campbell–Jackson and not an organization. These allegations do not align with our values. State Farm is committed to a diverse and inclusive environment, where all customers and associates are treated with fairness, respect and dignity. There has been no legal determination that State Farm has violated any state or federal discrimination law. Because this is a pending matter, we will have no further comment,” the company said in a statement, to WGLT in 2019.
The Chicago Sun Times picked up the story
According to court documents, on March 23, 2016, someone sent an email containing a “racist meme” to more than 50,000 State Farm employees. Campbell-Jackson reported this email to a State Farm human resources representative, Joni Davis. Davis responded that the company was already aware of concerns about the email and was investigating who may have sent it.
On April 25 and 26, 2016, Campbell-Jackson told Claims Manager Celeste Dodson and Vice President of Operations for Human Resources Rich Garcia about a racist letter that she and other State Farm employees had received.
The letter said things like:
. . Hispanish are lazy and cannot speak English well. Blacks are uneducated (maybe one or two exceptions) and Muslims are at the bottom of the barrel with the Hispanish…. When Trump came to Bloomington, . . . we saw a LOT of State Farm employees and a LOT of State Farm executives. They really do not want minorities at State Farm ….
. . . The black churches are scams …. The silent majority members were not happy that they brought posters and flyers into the building and placed them all around our workplace begging for money for the black lady only.
. . . The silent majority has been waiting for ten years and finally, the tables have turned on the minorities and the silent minority can speak out again.
The contents of the letter suggested that the sender was a State Farm employee. Among other things, the letter referred to the email with the racist meme that went to State Farm employees in March 2016.
Dodson and Garcia later spoke with her about the letters that were being collected by Campbell-Jackson.
When Campbell-Jackson told Garcia that she had been trying to collect all the letters, he told her, “That is not your job, those letters were addressed to State Farm (not Campbell-Jackson)… I don’t need you around there sharing the letters or opposing the letters to people.”
Garcia also told her to let HR do their job.
Garcia coordinated the response to the April 25 Letter.
On April 26, the day after the letter arrived, Dodson contacted Campbell-Jackson and thanked her for reporting the letter, and informed her that executive teams in human resources and administrative services were handling the matter.
In the case State Farm argued she needed proof that they lacked diligence on their part and that there was prejudice to the party asserting the defense (Campbell-Jackson).
Garcia had decided to terminate on May 9, 2016, due to her inappropriate email usage. Garcia and other State Farm employees discussed emails that Campbell-Jackson had sent to her personal address or to other individuals outside State Farm. She apologized and explained her actions by saying that “she wanted to justify her performance” and that using her personal account “enabled her to conveniently print . . . materials at home.”
Apparently some of the emails had confidential information. Campbell-Jackson sent 4,700 emails sent in a 17-month period that “appeared to be non-business-related correspondence,” including communications with her family.
She agreed that some of her communications, such as those involving her church or a family reunion, were “personal in nature,” but she said that she knew of other employees who used their email for non-business reasons.
The court found that Campbell-Jackson couldn’t prove that her firing was because of “racial discrimination.”
