By Eric Kelderman

A former professor and dean at the University of Louisiana at Monroe was awarded $450,000 in the settlement of an age-discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The settlement was approved on Monday by a federal judge.

The suit was the second that the EEOC had filed against the University of Louisiana system on behalf of the former professor and dean, Van McGraw.

Mr. McGraw had worked for the Monroe campus for 37 years and was dean of its College of Business Administration when he retired in 1989, according to a news release from the commission.

After he retired, Mr. McGraw was rehired as a professor in the department of management and marketing at Monroe, but he was fired in 1996 under a policy that prohibited rehiring retirees without the university system's approval.

The commission then filed a lawsuit against the university on behalf of Mr. McGraw and a former university president, Dwight D. Vines, arguing that the policy unfairly targeted older workers and violated federal law, said Greg Juge, senior trial lawyer for the commission. That suit was dismissed in 2001, because of technical issues, Mr. Juge said.

Beginning in 2002, Mr. McGraw applied for several positions with the university, but was told that he would not be hired because of his age and because of the earlier lawsuit.

In 2005, the EEOC filed its second lawsuit on behalf of Mr. McGraw.

The university sought to have the case dismissed, arguing that it was immune from federal lawsuits under the U.S. Constitution's 11th Amendment. But a trial court rejected that argument, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld that decision. In a unanimous opinion issued in 2009, a three-judge panel of the appellate court said it was "well established that sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment operates only to protect states from private lawsuits—not from lawsuits by the federal government."

The Fifth Circuit sent the case back to a federal district court, where the parties reached a settlement agreement earlier this year. On Monday, Judge Robert James, in the U.S. District Court, in Monroe, approved the settlement.

Under the terms of the settlement, the Board of Supervisors of the University of Louisiana system will enact new policies meant to prevent discrimination and retaliation. In addition, the board will submit 10 semiannual reports to the EEOC, detailing its efforts to prevent such violations.