A federal judge ruled Friday against a union local and its officers in their discrimination lawsuits against related labor organizations.

That ended the dual trial in U.S. District Court in Richland after the plaintiffs had rested, but before the defendants were to begin presenting their case Monday.

The plaintiffs did not present evidence that showed that Stephanie Green, president of United Steelworkers Local 12-369, had been discriminated against because she is black or a woman or that her speech was suppressed, ruled Senior Judge Robert Whaley.

He also found in the second case being heard at the same time that the local and its financial secretary, David Roberts, were not victims of the alleged discrimination against Green nor was there a concerted effort to suppress dissent or free speech within the local.

"As is usual in discrimination and retaliation claims, in this case there is no direct evidence of improper motive," the judge wrote in his decision. Although there was a racial comment and a joke e-mail, both from members of the local, that was not related to the labor organizations named as defendants, he found.

Green, Roberts and Local 12-369, which represents about 1,280 steelworkers who work at Hanford and elsewhere, had sued the United Steelworkers International.

Green also sued the Hanford Atomic Trades Council, an umbrella labor organization of 15 local unions whose members work at Hanford. Some members and officers of labor organizations also were named as defendants, but Whaley dismissed most of them from the cases last month.

Many of the issues in the cases stemmed from long-standing turmoil within United Steelworkers Local 12-369 and infighting among members of the executive board.

"A majority of the executive board opposes Green and Roberts and has constantly tried to undermine their work," said defendants in court documents. "Green and Roberts, for their part, are sometimes able to have the decisions of the executive board reversed at membership meetings, following which the executive board thinks of new ways to attack them."

The judge's major concern in the case was that Green had been removed from office briefly in August 2007, he wrote in his decision.

At the time, the international stepped in to remove the local's leadership and put it under an emergency administratorship. The judge earlier found that the international had not followed required procedures to show there was an emergency and dissolved the administratorship.

However, evidence at trial showed that turmoil within the local "had reached a point that intervention could be justified," the judge wrote his decision Friday.

Plaintiffs argued that the international did not do enough to protect the local, Green and Roberts from internal attacks.

The judge agreed that the international had done a poor job of investigating Green's claims of discrimination. But if it had investigated them, "the evidence would not have established the existence of racial and gender discrimination," the judge wrote.

The judge also looked at incidents used by the plaintiffs to illustrate their concerns.

HAMTC had reason to initially question the signature authority of Green on correspondence between the organizations when she was elected president, the judge found.

HAMTC knew about the controversy between Green and the executive board, and it continued to recognize the signatures of full-time staff representatives until the international requested her signature authority be recognized, the judge said.

Past presidents had been on staff full time and were paid a salary, but the executive board voted against paying Green a salary when she was first elected. The local was facing financial difficulties and one or both staff representatives would have had to be let go to pay Green a salary, the judge found.

In a related matter, Green's objection in 2006 to any international employee or local staff representative communicating with HAMTC "was a startling and marked departure from the past," the judge wrote. "She had no right to tell the employer, HAMTC or the international that they could not talk or meet without her."

In another instance, Green was excluded from meetings between the international and the local's Spokane branch when it was considering ending its affiliation with the local and perhaps the international.

Leadership of the Spokane branch was concerned about Green's decision to put executive board actions to a vote of the membership because Spokane membership was not able to attend the monthly meetings in Richland, the judge found.

Decisions of the executive board that were overruled at membership meetings include a request by Green that she be given an office, the firing of two staff representatives and a secretary, pay for Green as president, spending of money, approval for travel and other decisions.

The plaintiffs had asked for punitive and other damages in the cases and that the international be barred from taking over the local under an administratorship.

The judge's decision will be posted on tricityherald.com.