Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DOJ NEWS—Prosecutors announce resolution of two cases involving worker deaths in Ohio and Florida, (Mar 3, 2025)
Organizations Mentioned:Domingos 54 Construction | Fabcon Precast LLC | U.S. Department of Justice
By Jonathan Anderson
The AG also ordered dismissal of certain discrimination suits filed under Biden administration.
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced several developments in labor and employment matters. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the dismissal of civil rights lawsuits accusing local public safety agencies of discriminatory hiring practices. A concrete manufacturer pleaded guilty to willfully violating an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule after a worker sustained fatal injuries in Ohio. The owner and operator of a Florida construction firm also has been sentenced to prison and ordered to pay upwards of $60.5 million following an employee’s death.
Discrimination suits. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the Justice Department to dismiss pending federal civil rights lawsuits accusing police and fire departments around the country of discriminatory hiring practices. The litigation had been initiated under the Biden administration.
One such case involved the city of Durham, North Carolina, which settled with the federal government in October 2024. The DOJ had alleged that the city’s hiring process for firefighters violated Title VII because the fire department screened applicants with a written test that discriminated against Black candidates.
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division concluded at the time that the test did not meaningfully distinguish between applicants who could and could not perform the job of a firefighter. The test also disqualified Black applicants from employment at significantly disproportionate rates.
In a press release on Feb. 26, 2025, the DOJ said that local public safety agencies were “unjustly targeted” and that there was no evidence of intentional discrimination, only statistical disparities. The press release further added that Bondi and President Donald Trump “are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity nationwide, and in all sectors.”
Willful OSHA violation. In other employment-related developments at the DOJ, Fabcon Precast LLC has pleaded guilty to willfully violating an OSHA rule after a worker sustained fatal injuries at a concrete manufacturing facility in Grove City, Ohio.
On June 6, 2020, a malfunctioning pneumatic door on a concrete mixer closed on a worker’s head, trapping him. The worker was eventually freed and transported to a hospital, where he died five days later, according to the Justice Department.
The mixer had an exhaust valve that released the pneumatic energy powering the door. However, investigators determined that months before the incident, the handle that operated the valve broke off and was not replaced. Because the valve was broken, the worker could not perform the proper procedure to make the door safe to work around.
Federal law makes it a class B misdemeanor to willfully fail to follow an OSHA safety standard, where the failure causes the death of an employee. The class B misdemeanor is the only federal criminal charge covering such workplace safety violations.
Fraud, worker death. The owner and operator of Florida-based Domingos 54 Construction has been sentenced to prison and ordered to pay upwards of $60.5 million after pleading guilty to fraud and a willful violation of OSHA workplace safety standards that resulted in an employee’s death.
Prosecutors alleged that the defendant’s business was a shell company to provide workers, including undocumented aliens, with construction jobs. The defendant failed to secure the required worker’s compensation insurance coverage for these employees by falsifying the number of workers for which he sought coverage. In addition, the defendant failed to pay any federal employment taxes on the wages that these workers earned during the scheme between 2018 and 2022.
As a result, the defendant caused several worker’s compensation insurance companies to sustain a loss of over $22.7 million in premiums that they could have charged had they been aware of the number of workers, the DOJ said. The defendant also failed to pay to the Internal Revenue Service over $33.7 million in federal employment taxes on those workers’ wages.
OSHA investigators further issued six citations to the company for failure to provide fall protection to workers between February and July 2019. But even after being cited for these violations, the defendant continued to ignore OSHA requirements, according to the DOJ. In March 2020, the defendant assigned a worker and three other carpenters to install sheeting on the roof of a residential home in windy conditions without providing the required fall-protection gear or ensuring its use. As a result, one of the workers was blown off the roof and died from his injuries.
The defendant, of Wesley Chapel, was sentenced to 48 months in prison. He was also ordered to forfeit more than $5.5 million to the United States, forfeit numerous real properties and cash, and pay over $55 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and willful violation of a workplace standard that resulted in the death of his employee. The defendant previously pleaded guilty to those charges on July 9, 2024.
Companies: Fabcon Precast LLC; Domingos 54 Construction
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