Joseph Ray Terry was awarded $150,000 in damages and back pay after a Memphis district court judge ruled that he had been discriminated against by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with investigating workplace discrimination. Terry, a white Louisiana-trained lawyer, applied in 1984 to be a district director, but in the years that followed he was repeatedly passed over for promotion in favor of blacks—one of whom did not even possess a high school diploma. As part of the settlement, Terry will be granted the district-director position he has long sought.

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