Closed Case
Gender Discrimination in Employment
Settled in 1980 for Injunctive Relief

In late 1973 Paul Sprenger agreed to represent NOW in its then incipient efforts to create equal job opportunities for women. This suit against 3M was the fruit of that collaboration.

This lawsuit was important to practitioners because it established the principle that an employer must produce during the discovery phase of the lawsuit electronic employment data rather than forcing plaintiffs' lawyers to recreate a database from paper records. The lawsuit's final results were equally important to class members: under the terms of the settlement negotiated in 1980, 3M agreed to eliminate two practices that it had used to discriminate against women. The company agreed to cease the color coding of job applications & blue for men and pink for women – that it had used to facilitate job steering, and to cease terminating and grant leave and job return rights to women who had become pregnant. The case thus points up how private employment class action litigation has altered the human resources practices of the nation's largest employers. The classwide settlement with 3M was valued at more than $10 million.