According to media reports and court documents, Nike Inc. will pay $7.6 million to settle a class-action suit over alleged discrimination against black employees at its Chicago Niketown store.

Nike was originally sued over this supposed systemic discrimination back in December 2003. The case, which involved approximately 400 current and former black employees of the store, was certified in March of 2004.

While Nike has denied all allegations of wrongdoing and liability, the company agreed in the settlement, among other things, to appoint a compliance officer at headquarters as well as conduct diversity training for supervisors.

Commentary: We were surprised at this case to begin with as Nike is tremendously sensitive to its reputation (and the African-American community is a core customer base so this suit represented a double-whammy). We were also surprised that Nike did not already have a “compliance officer” at its headquarters as suggested in the settlement (note the required hire). We hope this represents an isolated circumstance and puts the issue behind them with no further problems occuring elsewhere.