The world was changing in 1990, as East German troops bulldozed the Berlin Wall and computer scientists unleashed a novel information-sharing system called the World Wide Web.But Deborah Jean Bryant remembers that time for a more personal reason: It was then that she filed a sexual discrimination complaint against the District of Columbia that has been litigated for the past 27 years. The length may set a record for the court system in the nation’s capital and is likely among the most protracted in the history of American jurisprudence.
Bryant, a 59-year-old who once worked in a typing pool for the District’s Department of Corrections, accused her former supervisor of denying her a promotion because she rebuffed his advances. In 1992, the director of the city’s now-defunct Department of Human Rights and Minority Business Development ruled in her favor.
What followed was not vindication but a dispute over the precise amount of money Bryant is owed — now including almost three decades of interest — that still has no end in sight.
