Eli Lilly might engage in racially discriminatory employment practices and policies that deny African-Americans an equal opportunity to advance within Eli Lilly.

This is an ongoing investigation and pending class action lawsuit against Eli Lilly & Company alleging that Eli Lilly engages in racially discriminatory employment practices and policies that deny African-Americans an equal opportunity to advance within the company.

Eli Lilly is a large pharmaceutical company and locates its headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The class action employment discrimination lawsuit alleges that Eli Lilly discriminates against its African-American employees by advancing white employees more quickly than African-American employees, and by denying African-American employees equal job assignments, promotional opportunities, training, compensation, and other benefits of employment. The class action lawsuit further alleges that Eli Lilly’s actions are part of a continuing pattern and practice of treating African-American employees differently from similarly situated white employees, including, but not limited to, subjecting minority employees to disparate terms and conditions and other forms of discrimination.

The employment discrimination class action lawsuit specifically alleges:

1. The racial discrimination includes Eli Lilly’s adherence to a policy of restricting the promotional and advancement opportunities of African-American employees so that they remain in the lower classification and compensation levels.

2. Eli Lilly’s promotion, training, and performance evaluation policies, practices, and procedures rely upon subjective judgments, procedures, and criteria that permit and encourage the incorporation of racial stereotypes and bias by Eli Lilly’s predominately white executive, managerial, and supervisory staff in making promotion, training, performance evaluation, and compensation decisions.

3. Racial discrimination in promotion occurs as a pattern and practice throughout the managerial level of all departments of Eli Lilly. Promotion opportunities are driven by personal familiarity, subjective decision-making, pre-selection, and interaction between white executives, managers, supervisors, and subordinates, rather than by merit or equality of opportunity. As a result, white employees have advanced and continue to advance more rapidly to better and higher paying jobs than do African-American
employees.

4. In addition, Eli Lilly has employed facially racial neutral practices that have had an unlawful disparate impact on African-American employees. Specifically, Lilly employs a performance evaluation process whereby Lilly employees are evaluated four times a year, culminating in an annual review based on the reviews from all four quarters. The performance evaluations have both objective criteria, as well as highly subjective criteria.

5. In addition, the decision by an Eli Lilly manager about whether to promote an employee or increase the employee’s pay is a subjective decision. In making those subjective decisions, the managers rely, in part, on the performance evaluation system, which is itself largely subjective.

To date over 100 African AMerican employees of Eli Lilly have submitted personal declarations in support of the allegations of racial discrimination.