Shonda Million was a corrections officer for the Warren County Jail in Ohio. The Jail is operated by the Sheriff’s Office. It houses minimum, medium, and maximum security adult inmates of both sexes. Between September 2012 and August 2015, the Jail employed 17–23 female officers and roughly 33–35 male officers, not counting supervisors. The Jail has four male housing units and one female housing unit, known as C-Pod. C-Pod…
While Nickolas Forrest was employed with the police department in Haltom City, Texas, officers and supervisors began mocking his religion. Forrest is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormon Church. He reported the problem to higherups. Shortly thereafter, the Department assigned an internal affairs officer to investigate Forrest for misconduct – namely lying to a superior officer about whether…
When Christopher Gibbs applied to be a Pittsburgh policeman, he passed the written test and got a conditional job offer. After that, Pennsylvania Law required him to “be personally examined by a licensed psychologist and found to be psychologically capable of exercising appropriate judgment or restraint in performing the duties of a police officer.” When two of the three psychologists who interviewed him opined that he was unfit to…
In 1987, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department hired Faye Davis, an African American female, as a firefighter. Beginning in 2007, Davis took the promotional exam to become a Chief Fire Officer (CFO) four years in a row but was not promoted. Davis sued, claiming she was the victim of race and gender discrimination. The parties’ primary disagreement was the number of actual vacancies during the 2009-2010 promotional cycle. The…
Michael Snowden is an African American male who formerly worked as a sergeant for the United States Park Police (USPP) supervising other law enforcement officers in the Communications Section. While working a shift in August 2004, Snowden received a call from his relative, Brian Lamont. On the call, Lamont asked Snowden for the registration information associated with a specific license plate – information that Snowden had the ability to…
Nicole Wells was a corrections officer at the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Michigan. While still on probation she was terminated for following improper security procedures while assigned to a gate and for repeated personal use of the Employer’s computers. Wells filed a discrimination lawsuit under both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and its Michigan counterpart. Wells’ primary argument was that she was treated more harshly than non-African…
Detroit Police Officer Adeela Green, who is African American, was supervised by Lieutenant James Cashion, who is white. On April 16, 2016, Green and her partner were dispatched to address debris falling from an abandoned building that was creating a traffic hazard. Cashion arrived at the scene and deployed barricades to block a parking lane on Michigan Avenue. According to his activity log, Cashion counseled Green and her partner…
Lavanden Darks is one of four black deputies with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department in Missouri. Jackson County employs approximately 100 sworn officers. In 2014, Jackson County required all sworn officers appearing in uniform to be clean shaven with the exception of moustaches. Darks experienced pain with shaving and was medically diagnosed with an inflammatory skin condition known as psuedofolliculitis barbae. After attempting several treatments and other shaving methods,…
Jo Anne Pepitone is a police sergeant in the Lower Merion, Pennsylvania Police Department. Pepitone sued the Department, alleging that “there have been numerous sexually charged rumors circulating throughout the police department that have contributed to creating a sexually hostile and gender discriminatory hostile work environment,” including rumors that Pepitone had “sexual relationships with her supervisors and members of neighboring police departments” and “was promoted because of a sexual…
Aubrey Lyons is an African-American corrections officer with the Michigan Department of Corrections. After being transferred in 2012 to the Macomb Correctional Facility, Lyons allegedly began to experience various incidents of discrimination by his white supervisors. Lyons filed his first internal discrimination complaint against the Department in January 2015 in response to being disciplined for violating its computer use policies. Lyons claimed the white investigating lieutenant, James Webster, singled…
Officer Detlef Sommerfield works for the Chicago Police Department. Sommerfield was born and raised in Germany, where some of his family members had died in concentration camps during the Holocaust. At some point he emigrated to the United States, settled in Chicago, and joined the CPD. His supervisor was Sergeant Lawrence Knasiak. As the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals described it, “for years, Sommerfield endured vicious anti-Semitic abuse…
Tiffany Washington, an African American woman, served as a sergeant in the Metro Transit Police Department from 2008 to 2016. The Department is a unit of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which operates trains and buses in and around the District of Columbia. Washington worked at WMATA’s Revenue Collection Facility in Alexandria, Virginia, where she supervised lower-ranking officers aboard the money train, which transports cash fares from…
Officer Kathleen Delanoy works for the Ocean Township Police Department in New Jersey. When Delanoy found out she was pregnant with her second child, she informed her supervisors her doctor recommended she be taken off patrol. She asked to be transferred to a light-duty or less strenuous position within the Department. She was consequently assigned to non-patrol duty, pursuant to the Department’s Maternity Assignment Standard Operating Procedure (Maternity SOP)….
Brett Horvath was employed as a driver/pump operator by the City of Leander Fire Department in Texas. Horvath is an ordained Baptist minister and objects to vaccinations as a tenet of his religion. In 2014, two years after he was hired, the Department adopted an infection control plan that directed fire department personnel to receive flu vaccines. Horvath sought an exemption from the directive on religious grounds, and the…
When the City of Americus, Georgia failed to hire Roderick Jolivette as its fire chief, Jolivette sued, claiming he was discriminated against because he is African-American and in retaliation for suing his former employer for unlawful employment practices. A federal trial court found that the legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons the City proffered for hiring Roger Bivins, a Caucasian man, were not pretexts for discrimination and retaliation. Jolivette appealed, and the…
Adam Wazny was born in Poland. He immigrated to the United States with his parents and siblings in the mid-1990s. Although he has lived in the United States for most of his life, Wazny speaks English with an accent. Wazny joined the Chicago Police Department in 2003. In 2009, after working in several roles including as a beat officer, he transferred to the Department’s vice section, which is made…
Debra Lee Anderson and Deborah Cady were committed partners who worked for the Rapid City Police Department in South Dakota. Cady retired from the Department in May 2012. The couple married on July 19, 2015. Cady passed away on March 10, 2017. Upon Cady’s passing, Anderson applied for spousal survivor benefits under Cady’s retirement plan with the South Dakota Retirement System. The System denied Anderson’s application claiming Anderson and…
Most discrimination cases follow a three-step process first described by the Supreme Court in McDonnell-Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). Under the McDonnell-Douglas framework, the employee bears the initial burden of setting forth a prima facie case of discrimination. The burden then shifts to the employer to articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for whatever adverse action it took against the employee. If the employer meets that burden,…
Patrick Boyd was a captain with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, and a member of the Department’s SWAT team. Boyd is white. On March 26, 2015, Boyd sent an email to other officers and employees of the Department, to which he attached a list of grievances. Some concerned the Department’s promotion policies and testing, and were motivated in part by Boyd’s belief that the Department was “favoring one…
Joseph Giberson, the now-retired Police Chief of Stafford Township, New Jersey presided over the 2012-2013 police sergeant promotional process. Among the candidates was Joseph Mrazek, who also served as president of the local Police Benevolent Association (PBA). Mrazek sued Giberson, among others, for retaliating against him in the promotion process because of his union affiliation. Candidates for promotion to sergeant were evaluated in a two-part process that included both…
Frank Blair and Gabe Molina are employees of the New Mexico Department of Corrections, and are officials of AFSCME Local 3422, the bargaining unit for New Mexico’s corrections officers. In 2009, the Department denied a request from Blair and Molina to use a state vehicle to travel to and from a policy review meeting with Department management. Blair and Molina were attending the meeting in their capacity as “employee…
Andre DeCohen, who is African-American, is a fire captain employed by Los Angeles County. On February 25, 2012, DeCohen was working an overtime shift at a different station. Tom Brady was another captain working the same shift. In the Department, firefighters, including captains, are required to participate in physical training for at least one hour per day. When DeCohen arrived at Fire Station 110 for his overtime shift, Brady…
Timothy Rivers, an African-American, was hired by the Macon, Georgia Police Department in February 2010. Rivers was certified as an Explosive Ordnance Device K-9 handler, and had been assigned to partner with EOD K-9 Arco in August 2013. On January 1, 2014, the City of Macon and Bibb County were consolidated to form a unified governing body known as Macon-Bibb County. As a result of the consolidation, the Macon…
Linda Tisby began working as a corrections officer for the Camden County, New Jersey Correctional Facility in 2002. In 2015, Tisby reverted to the Sunni Muslim faith. On May 1, 2015, Tisby reported to work wearing, for the first time, a traditional Muslim khimar, a tight fitting head covering without a veil. Tisby’s supervisor informed her she was not in compliance with the uniform policy and could not work…
The Clark County, Nevada School District hired Bradley Roberts as a campus monitor in 1992. At that time, he was known as Brandilyn Netz. In 1994, Roberts moved to a police officer position. Roberts held that position without incident for seventeen years. In 2011, Roberts began dressing for work like a man, grooming like a man, and identifying himself as a man. He also started using the men’s bathroom…
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