Joshua Yarbrough says he knew something was up when he noticed newly installed cameras in the offices of the Dallas telecommunications equipment company where he worked.
It was 2018, and the 34-year-old Fort Worth, Texas man watched as his Black colleagues at Glow Networks Inc. were reprimanded for checking their phones during work and were moved away from one another in their workspaces. He noticed his non-Black co-workers didn’t get the same punishment.
Of 11 rooms in the office, two were monitored by cameras, and that’s where Black workers were told to sit, he said.
“The African-Americans were pushed right in front of the cameras, and we realized that we were watched closely,” said Yarbrough, a lead engineer at the company.
Yarbrough found out he was being replaced by two employees with less tenure and telecommunications experience. His replacements were not Black. He was demoted to an engineer in the group, overseen by his replacement.
So he resigned.
“We decided to take it in our own hands and actually go to court and really fight for something that we really believe is not right,” Yarbrough said. “African-Americans deal with this type of thing every day.”
So Yarbrough and nine other former employees sued Glow Networks and its parent company, CSS Corp., for racial discrimination. A federal jury in North Texas this month agreed with the workers, awarding them a total of $70 million in damages.
Glow Networks, a Delaware corporation with its main office located in Dallas on Preston Road, performs engineering, installation services and consulting for telecommunications companies. The company was acquired by CSS Corp. in 2010.
The company’s lawyer, Rachel Ullrich, declined to comment on the case. In court documents, Glow Networks denied exposing the former employees to a hostile work environment and said it exercised “reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any harassing behavior.”
Of the 10 former workers, many had complained about discrimination to Glow Networks management and the company’s human resources department, but no action was taken, their lawsuit alleged.
Matt Lofland, a white team leader who joined in the lawsuit, said he had recommended two Black employees on his team for promotion. The lawsuit said neither was promoted.
When the company went through a series of seniority-based layoffs, high-performing Black employees were laid off instead, he said.
Lofland, 34, was told during the layoffs that human resources instructed his manager: “Don’t lay off any white people,” according to court documents. He immediately complained to his manager, who took it to human resources. Lofland was demoted less than two weeks later and eventually resigned.
“Everybody’s equal and the same, and I’m just kind of a personality who has been the kind to stand up for people,” Lofland said.
Peter Tijani, another former engineer at the company, said the discrimination Black workers faced was not noticeable at first, until his colleagues spoke up. Tijani was terminated because of his race, according to the lawsuit. So was his brother Paul.
“I don’t wish for anyone else to go through that kind of trauma,” Tijani said.
Since discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission can take considerable time to resolve, lawyer Brian Sanford said the ex-employees chose to sue using the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first federal law to define U.S. citizenship and protect different races.
All of the workers who sued went on to find other jobs after leaving Glow Networks. Sanford said that’s why they only sought punitive damages and compensation for emotional distress. The jury in Plano awarded each worker $7 million in damages.
“They were sending the message,” Sanford said. “Don’t do this in the 21st century. Stop.”
Juror Amber Kirkham, 21, of Allen, said she didn’t know what to expect for her first time on a jury in a federal case.
“It’s just really rewarding and kind of restores faith in the justice system,” Kirkham said.
