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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Lawsuit Alleges Anti-Gay Bias At Nordstrom Ex-Worker Claims She Hit Glass Ceiling Because She’s A Lesbian

Jane Hadley Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Nordstrom President John Nordstrom told the store’s executive vice president that he did not want gays working in the men’s department, a former Nordstrom executive testified Tuesday in a wrongful discharge trial in King County Superior Court.

Potentially gay employees were screened out according to how they dressed, said Michael Dench, once the corporate merchandise manager for Nordstrom’s Rack division.

The lawsuit being tried in the courtroom of Judge Mary Brucker was filed by Janice Grounds, who worked in various positions at Nordstrom for nine years until August 1993. Grounds alleges she quit because it became clear she never could be promoted to a higher position because she is a lesbian.

The company says Grounds was given a number of promotions while employed at Nordstrom and quit voluntarily to start her own coffee business. None of the 12 managers who made promotion decisions involving her knew of her sexual orientation, the clothing company said in its trial brief.

In a deposition filed with the court and in testimony in court, Dench said Executive Vice President Jack Irving told him John Nordstrom did not want any homosexuals in the men’s department. Irving told Dench to “be careful” in hiring, Dench said. Irving made the comments many times between 1983 and 1987, Dench said.

Grounds’ attorney, Shelley Kostrinsky, said in an interview that Dench’s testimony illustrates the attitudes about gays at high levels of the company.

But Nordstrom spokeswoman Brooke White said in an interview Tuesday that neither Irving nor Nordstrom ever made the anti-gay comments.

“We have a very strong policy against any form of discrimination, including sexual orientation,” White said.

Dench, who was terminated by Nordstrom, said he never refused to hire anybody because he thought the person was gay. But, he said he did tell Nordstrom’s menswear buyers in Northern California to screen out any male job applicants they felt were gay.

Managers did not ask prospective employees whether they were gay but rather did a “visual review,” assessing whether the employee “would fit in the Nordstrom mold,” Dench said in his deposition.

“If the individual came in wearing their navy pinstripe suit, burgundy tie, and white button-down collar shirt, you went, ‘they’ll fit,”’ Dench said. “If they came in wearing apparel that was non-Nordstrom looking, with European clothes and lots of flash and dash to it, that wasn’t the type of sales person who could relate to the Nordstrom natural-shoulder clothing that they sold,” he said.

Gay activists Tuesday condemned the attitudes reflected in Dench’s testimony.

“If there’s even a grain of truth to it, it is absolutely appalling,” said Carol Sterling, executive director of the Privacy Fund, a political group defending gay and lesbian civil rights.

“The gay community spends a lot of time and money at Nordstrom. This is something that has to be aggressively looked into. The company has got to make their position clear on this immediately,” she said.

White said, “The Nordstrom family is fully supportive of diversity among their employees and is committed to a discrimination-free workplace.”

Kostrinsky said that because promotion and salary decisions at Nordstrom are secretive and highly subjective, managers can inject their prejudices into the decisions.

Grounds maintains in her lawsuit that store managers and buyers were recommending her for some of the vacant positions she sought, but she was told Dench did not approve of her. The suit said Grounds got favorable evaluations and that one of her supervisors took the unusual step of writing a letter insisting she was ready to be a buyer.

The suit said Grounds was denied 26 promotions for which she was qualified.

Grounds was manager of the Point of View department at Seattle’s downtown flagship store when she quit. The suit said she “hit a glass ceiling as a department manager.”