Attorneys for Fannie Mae have filed a motion to dismiss an employment discrimination lawsuit filed against the government-sponsored mortgage company, claiming the plaintiffs are bound by arbitration agreements that preclude litigation.
At issue is a complaint filed in July by 66 former Fannie Mae employees who were fired in April for alleged fraudulent activity related to the company’s charitable giving program. The plaintiffs denied any wrongdoing and alleged they were discriminated against based on their national origin and age. Each of the plaintiffs named in the complaint are U.S. citizens of Indian national origin, and most are over the age of 50 and speak the Telugu language.
On Sept. 17, all claims in the complaint were voluntarily dismissed by 21 of those plaintiffs. Fannie Mae’s attorneys argued in the motion filed Monday that the remaining plaintiffs are required to resolve any employment-related grievances in an arbitration hearing instead of a civil court case.
“Fannie Mae does not waive any right, defense, or objection to any claim asserted by the plaintiffs, and expressly reserves the right to assert all such rights, defenses, and objections,” the motion states. “Fannie Mae simply asserts that arbitration, rather than this litigation, is the proper forum for resolving plaintiffs’ claims.”
Milton Johns, an attorney with Executive Law Partners PLLC representing the plaintiffs, told Scotsman Guide in an email that he plans to oppose the motion.
“We believe the remaining plaintiffs are not bound by an arbitration agreement with Fannie Mae and we will oppose that motion to compel arbitration,” Johns wrote.
The employment discrimination lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is separate from two Fannie Mae-related defamation lawsuits filed in Fairfax County (Virginia) Circuit Court in August by Johns on behalf of 41 plaintiffs who overlap with the D.C. case.
Those complaints — which named Fannie Mae Chairman Bill Pulte and Priscilla Almodovar, the company’s president and CEO, as co-defendants — stem from a joint statement about the alleged fraudulent activity issued in April by Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which Pulte heads.
The fired employees in those concurrent cases claim they were defamed by that joint statement, with the complaint against Pulte also alleging he defamed the plaintiffs when he appeared on a Fox News program in April and claimed some former Fannie Mae workers had been making charitable contributions and then were “getting kickbacks.”
Johns told Scotsman Guide that the Fairfax County cases have since been removed by the defendants to federal court. He said, “We are considering a motion to remand to state court,” but added that “we are confident that Virginia law supports the plaintiffs in both cases, so we are comfortable litigating in either forum (state or federal).”
