On December 15, 1966, the United States Justice Department filed suit against Local 53 of the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers Union of New Orleans, Louisiana. The Justice Department charged that the all-white Local 53 was in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Title VII of the Act prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The government observed that the locals’ hiring practices were nepotistic and discriminatory. Local 53 only accepted applicants with a reference to a current member or one who was related by blood or marriage to an existing member. This policy excluded Blacks and Mexican Americans from being admitted. Those previously rejected from union membership filed federal complaints with the support of the New Orleans NAACP branch and the national LDF.
By late May 1967, the Louisiana Weekly newspaper cited that civil rights activists and the government won “an unprecedented victory” against Local 53. Judge Herbert Christenberry of Louisiana’s Eastern District Court found Local 53 guilty of racial discrimination and demanded that the all-white union local desegregate immediately. Christenberry’s opinion instructed Local 53 to incorporate minority membership by notifying predominantly Black high schools and vocational institutions in the New Orleans metropolitan area. The decision was significant because Local 53 was the largest contracting agency and supplier of employees for the asbestos industry in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and southern Mississippi.
Local 53 appealed the district court’s opinion and argued that Judge Christenberry’s proposed remedy violated the antipreferential-treatment section of Title VII. Christenberry previously mandated that the local establish a quota system when hiring to correct the racial imbalance within Local 53’s membership. In mid-January 1969, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the union’s claims and ruled that “The district court did no more than prevent future discrimination when it prohibited a continuing exclusion of negroes.” The Fifth Circuit observed that Local 53’s employment practices would “forever deny to negroes and Mexican-Americans any real opportunity for membership.” The precedent-setting Fifth Circuit ruling was the first major appeals court decision to prohibit nepotism in the workplace.
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