Former Centex Corp. employee files lawsuit

Friday, April 28, 2006

Home building and construction giant Centex Corp. has been slapped with a workplace discrimination lawsuit filed by a former employee.

Fiona B. Wright of Silver Spring is asking for $3 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages and other costs, according to the April 21 filing in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County.

Wright, who is black, alleges racial and gender discrimination, saying a supervisor told her that a position needed to be filled by a ‘‘white male closer.”

Ken Smalling, a spokesman for Centex in its Dallas headquarters, said he wasn’t aware of the lawsuit but was looking into it.

A hearing is slated for July 21 before Judge DeLawrence Beard.

Wright started working for Centex in 2002 as a sales representative in Upper Marlboro and Mitchellville, according to her suit. After working in Kensington for part of 2003, Wright was told she would be reassigned to Upper Marlboro, with her supervisor saying she ‘‘would be a better fit” in the predominantly black community, the lawsuit states.

After learning that her replacement in Kensington would be a white representative with ‘‘no experience,” Wright asked to remain in Kensington for at least another month to ‘‘prove she could successfully sell” there, according to the filing. She met or exceeded the sales quota in subsequent months and even won some sales awards from Centex in early 2004, according to the lawsuit.

But after being reprimanded for what she said called ‘‘trumped-up” charges, Wright was fired in April 2004, with Centex still owing her some $110,000 in commissions, the filing states.

Centex had about 40 sales representatives in the Washington, D.C., region during Wright’s employment, and only two were black, though more than half were women, according to the lawsuit.

The ‘‘discriminatory and retaliatory conduct” of Wright’s supervisors was ‘‘pervasive and severe,” and Centex ‘‘failed to properly investigate Ms. Wright’s claims of discrimination,” the lawsuit states. Wright is represented by Rockville lawyer Thomas S. Rand Jr.

Centex regularly makes the Washington Business Journal’s annual list of the top homebuilders in the region. It ranked sixth in 2004 with 963 homes sold in the area.

Centex Corp. reported revenues of $4.6 billion for fiscal 2006, which ended in March, up 25 percent from the previous year. Net income rose by 6 percent to $391.8 million.