EPA manager files new discrimination suit
A black senior manager at the Environmental Protection Agency is suing the agency, claiming that officials there are attempting to force her resignation as punishment for winning a previous lawsuit, which exposed sex and race discrimination at the agency.
The case will test recently instated EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt's commitment to fighting workplace discrimination and enhancing whistleblower protections, said Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, who is filing the lawsuit. In August 2000, a jury awarded Coleman-Adebayo $600,000 after finding the agency guilty of discrimination against her.
In a complaint lodged at the U.S. District Court for D.C. on Nov. 24, Coleman-Adebayo alleged that EPA officials have pushed her to leave her job during the two years since she won her case. According to Coleman-Adebayo, agency managers have assigned her to projects in areas where she has no background or prior experience. Early last month, a senior EPA official sent her a memorandum ordering her to return to work at agency headquarters by Dec. 1. Coleman-Adebayo has worked from home since January 2001 for health reasons.
Coleman-Adebayo's complaint, filed last week by Bruce Terris, a prominent civil rights and public interest lawyer, asks the district court to issue an order allowing Coleman-Adebayo to continue working from home. The suit also asks for an unspecified amount in damages to compensate Coleman-Adebayo for "medical costs, emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish and loss of enjoyment of life" she has endured as a result of her wrangles with the EPA.
The district court has issued a temporary restraining order allowing Coleman-Adebayo to work from home until her case is heard.
On Wednesday, an EPA spokeswoman said agency officials had taken "a number of aggressive, positive steps to address the perception of discrimination." According to Cynthia Bergman, the measures include revitalizing the agency's "diversity action program" and creating a workplace solutions office to address employee complaints before legal action becomes necessary.
EPA also hired Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm, to conduct a management review, Bergman said.
Bergman did not comment on Coleman-Adebayo's latest allegations.
Coleman-Adebayo's attorney warned Leavitt about the lawsuit in a Nov. 21 letter. Terris' letter contended his client had developed high blood pressure from working at EPA. He said Coleman-Adebayo's cardiologist had sent numerous notes to the agency explaining that she would risk renal failure, heart attack or stroke by returning to an unfriendly and stressful office environment.
Leavitt's predecessor, Christine Todd Whitman, received praise for her efforts to combat discrimination within the agency. She decided not to appeal the 2000 court ruling in favor of Coleman-Adebayo, and in the summer of 2001, she addressed a series of other discrimination complaints by requiring all 1,600 EPA managers and supervisors to attend a two-day national civil rights training program. Whitman stepped down in June.
But the managers accused of discrimination are still at the EPA, Coleman-Adebayo said. Instead of being punished or even asked to leave, they have "all been elevated to much higher positions," she added. She said she sees this as a "tacit approval" of their behavior.
"To me, this is the irony of all ironies," Coleman-Adebayo said. "[Agency officials] asked someone who won a victory in court to resign." This request came up during arbitration preceding the current lawsuit, she said, adding that it has long seemed apparent to her that she is not welcome at her job.
According to Coleman-Adebayo, EPA officials said her failure to accept concessions offered during mediation sessions justified their request that she return to work at headquarters. In a Nov. 21 memorandum, Thomas Murray, chief of the EPA's Prevention Analysis Branch, added that the agency expects Coleman-Adebayo to take up a new, GS-15 level position in the Office of Cooperative Environmental Management when she returns.
The reassignment would "promote a professionally rewarding and productive working relationship" between Coleman-Adebayo and the agency, Murray wrote, and would fit her "skills and abilities."
But Coleman-Adebayo said she lacks the expertise necessary to perform the new duties, and added that she was not responsible for ending the arbitration. Her attorney noted that regardless of who is at fault, the failed arbitration talks are not grounds for the EPA to demand that Coleman-Adebayo return to the office.
Since winning her 2000 case, Coleman-Adebayo successfully shepherded the 2002 Notification and Federal Employee Anti-Discrimination and Retaliation (No FEAR) Act into law. The law, which took effect Oct. 1, requires agencies losing or settling discrimination and whistleblower cases to pay judgments out of their own budgets, rather than a general government fund. But two months after the effective date, there are still no regulations instructing agencies on how to implement the law.