"Nobody takes discrimination cases," says Robert Galvan, in reference to the trouble he went through finding a lawyer to represent him. Galvan, an American Indian, is suing the University of Washington for wrongful termination. He believes his firing was the result of racist personnel practices of the university.

Back in 2005 Galvan, an employee in the grant department of the University of Washington, had a conflict with another employee. According to Galvan's lawyer, the university didn't follow proper procedure for those type of situations and instead just fired Galvan. Afterwards, Galvan says he had to wait 60 days before he was told why he was terminated.

Galvan's suit is three-pronged: first, he is accusing the university of not following the adverse impact laws; second, he is alleging disparaging treatment; and third, he is claiming his work environment was hostile.

Galvan knows that he is fighting an uphill battle. "Hard to get support for things of color," he says. When he asked for his records from the university he could not get them because the University of Washington does not keep track of their American Indian employees since they make up less than 2% of the population. When he asked for the public records of cases of racial discrimination brought against the university, he found over 300 counts. Of those 300, only one prevailed. Most were determined to be unfounded, and some requests took almost 20 times the amount of time the university's policy states it should take UW to respond. Most other information provided was extensive and irrelevant.

The preliminaries have already started. The first of the two hearings was centered on Galvan's accusation of the university not adhering to the adverse impact laws. The hearing began with the presiding judge informing Galvan and his lawyer that he was a University of Washington alumni as well as a former coach of their tennis team and that he would step down from the case if Galvan and his lawyer felt that he would be too biased. Galvan and his lawyer did not feel the judge's alma mater played a factor and allowed the hearing to proceed as planned. At the end of both the prosecuting and defense attorney's statements the judge ruled that Galvan's claims of the university's lack of compliance with the adverse impact laws lacked any substantial evidence. The judge's main example of evidence that Galvan could and should provide was other former employees of the university who also felt they were wrongfully terminated for similar reasons. Galvan says that this too has proven to be frustratingly difficult because few people want to stand up and tell what they know, especially those still employed by the university who do not want to put their jobs in jeopardy.

Galvan plans to keep trying to find more people to help turn his case into a class action suit. Until then, however, he is preparing for his next hearing, where the judge will hear his case of disparaging treatment and hostile work environment.