[2] Gorman was plaintiff lawyer in a discrimination case filed against Chicago-based printing company RR Donnelley that she took all the way to the Supreme Court.
She cited personnel records showing that after Donnelley closed the 1,000-employee printing plant in Chicago, transferring some employees to other locations, only 1.2% of those who received transfers were black, compared with 30% of white workers.Gorman told the Associated Press that in many cases black workers with seniority were fired while less-experienced white workers were kept on: "In fact, some of my clients had to go to facilities to help train these younger employees in how to work the machinery.
"[8] Soon after filing the case on behalf of workers from the shut-down plant, Gorman expanded it to a class action suit on behalf of Donnelley black employees nationwide, more than 500 workers from 60 or more different locations, claiming "a long-term pattern of racial discrimination and harassment" and presenting evidence including racial and sexual jokes shared in company emails.
Gorman many years later (2012) told an interviewer that she was surprised by the Supreme Court's unanimous verdict after the "harsh" questions she got from Justice Antonin Scalia,[4] saying: I counted him as a “no” vote.
I later learned that Justice Stevens--who wrote the opinion changing the statute of limitations in §1981 cases to four years across the country instead of the personal injury statute in each state--thought it was very important for procedural issue decisions to be unanimous so they negotiated around Scalia’s concerns.The result, according to the Chicago Tribune, was "a $15 million settlement of a racial discrimination suit against R.R.
"[2][10] After learning, in October 2005, that more than 200 prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, had no lawyers, Gorman volunteered to represent one detainee.
"[14] After her first meeting with al-Ghazzawi, a Libyan who had been running a bakery in Afghanistan when neighbors denounced him as a terrorist, she was struck by his bad health.
In addition to trying to move his case toward a trial, she sought medical care for him and access to his health records, but was refused on all counts.
[21] Gorman alleged, and Kennelly agreed, that it was relevant to the Fields trial whether or not "the burying of street files was a de facto policy of the Police Department.
[31] Gorman, representing the mother of police-shooting victim Divonte Young in a 2018 lawsuit against Chicago, said that the pattern of withholding evidence continues.