Several People in Oregon Succeed in Suing Retailers for Racial Discrimination

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Many people of color are familiar with the experience of shopping while Black, walking into a store and being followed by a security guard, maybe being asked to leave or asked for a receipt on the way out. Legal recourse can be difficult, but as Katia Riddle reports, several people in Oregon have had success suing retailers for racial discrimination.

KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: March 26, 2020, was a day that would change Michael Mangum’s life forever. It started, like many other days, with the to-do list. His wife had been bugging him to replace a lightbulb.

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RIDDLE: {snip} He went to Walmart. In the aisle, he described seeing out of the corner of his eye a guy standing close by.

MANGUM: And the first thing out of his mouth was, what are you looking at me for? So I looked back to my right to see if it was somebody else he could have been talking to.

RIDDLE: The guy was a security guard.

MANGUM: I said, man, you just need to leave me alone. I’m just looking for a lightbulb.

RIDDLE: Instead, he says, the security guard told him to leave. Mangum refused. The security guard called the police. {snip}

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RIDDLE: He took Walmart to court for racial discrimination and won. Still, Walmart continues to dispute Mangum’s version of the event. {snip} Here’s Mangum’s attorney, Jason Kafoury.

JASON KAFOURY: Suddenly, jurors have been saying, we want to send a message to these big corporations that discriminating against Black people is not OK.

RIDDLE: The jury awarded the maximum amount in this case, more than $4 million.

KAFOURY: And we’re going to do it in the only language they understand, which is money.

RIDDLE: This is one of two unprecedented wins that Kafoury’s had recently in shopping-while-Black cases. He believes there are a number of reasons for this success. One factor is cellphone cameras. It’s easier than ever to document mistreatment. And Kafoury has another theory.

KAFOURY: A ton of white guilt about what white people have done to Black people in our country came out through the Black Lives Matter movement.

CHRIS DOMINIC: From what we’ve seen, I would say that is true.

RIDDLE: Chris Dominic is a jury consultant in Portland. He studies the behavior of juries and says before George Floyd, there was often at least one holdout on a jury in these kinds of cases, often a white person – not anymore.

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RIDDLE: Dominic says this is especially true in Democratic strongholds, like Portland. {snip}

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