The Georgia Department of Labor came under sharp criticism during the pandemic for their failure to process unemployment claims in a timely manner.  A preliminary agreement has been reached between the Georgia Department of Labor and attorneys who filed a class action suit aimed at pushing the department to speed up its handling of jobless claims and questions from claimants, federal court documents show. But after the agreement was reached, Labor Commissioner Mark Butler’s department issued a fiery statement about a press release concerning the settlement.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the deal calls for the DOL to improve its communications systems and eliminate remaining backlogs by the end of the year, according to attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center and Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore. The law groups filed the suit on behalf of people waiting for claims or appeals to be resolved after the department was overwhelmed during the pandemic.

“COVID-19 broke the Georgia unemployment system,” said Jason Carter, a partner at Bondurant, Mixson. “These new systems should provide timely information to claimants, reduce the number of chokepoints, and help ensure that the system won’t break again.”

But Labor Commissioner Mark Butler took issue with Carter’s statement and accused the plaintiffs’ lawyers of making “false and misleading” assertions about the “proposed settlement” and GDOL.  The GDOL issued their own press release about the proposed settlement and said, “(the GDOL) was already making the improvements to its systems mentioned, before the lawsuit was even filed, but we were willing to consider feedback from their clients if it improved the customer experience. ”

Carter said his group’s statements were based on statements DOL officials made.

“I don’t know why they feel like this is a fight,” he said. “We settled the case, we reached an agreement and we think it’s a good outcome for people.”

The suit was originally filed in Fulton County Superior Court, then transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, which is based in Atlanta.