Judge gives preliminarily OK to $29 million FDNY inspector settlement

Payouts from discrimination class-action suit likely to begin next fall

A federal judge has preliminarily approved a $29.2 million settlement in the class-action racial discrimination suit brought in 2020 by FDNY fire protection inspectors against the city. The inspectors and their union, Local 2507 of District Council 37, argued that the inspectors, at least 70 percent of whom are people of color, have been discriminated against because they make $9,000 less on average than Department of Buildings inspectors, a majority of whom are white.    

Manhattan U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres certified the inspectors’ class action complaint in 2022, finding that fire protection inspectors’ jobs are more demanding than DOB inspectors. Last August, the inspectors and the city reached their first proposed settlement, creating two separate classes of fire protection inspectors who would receive different levels of compensation from a settlement; one with those employed by the FDNY between May 1, 2017, to August 31, 2023, called the damages class, and a second, smaller class of those employed after that period, labeled the pay adjustment class.