A federal jury on Tuesday ordered Clark County to pay $600,000 to three Latino Public Works employees over years of racial discrimination and harassment.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Los Angeles-based civil rights organization, filed suit on behalf of Elias Peña, Isaiah Hutson and Ray Alanis in the U.S. District Court of Western Washington in June 2021.
Peña and Hutson started working in the roads division by 2016; Alanis joined in 2018. The suit claimed the men were subjected to a pattern of anti-Latino remarks and inconsistent treatment due to their race “on an almost weekly basis.”
“After years of experiencing a hostile work environment at Clark County, our clients have finally been vindicated. The jury heard their stories and believed them,” Luis L. Lozada, a staff attorney with the civil rights group, said in a press release Wednesday.
In the lawsuit, the men said they were subjected to insults, threats and harassment from white coworkers and supervisors, several of whom are still employed with the county.
In one instance, the suit claimed a supervisor said that Clark County was being ruined by Latinos, whom he referred to using racist and derogatory terms. In another instance, a coworker said Latinos were a “cancer that needed to be cut out.”
The suit also claimed the men were subjected to more than just verbal abuse. They said they were denied pay, benefits and training opportunities given to non-Latino coworkers. Around July 4, 2020, Peña said he was exposed to another county employee diagnosed with COVID-19. When he informed his supervisor, he said he was told he would have to use personal time off to either test or quarantine but later learned his non-Latino workers were given paid time off to quarantine.
The three employees took their complaints to both Human Resources and County Manager Kathleen Otto but said their concerns were either ignored or dismissed and that the county found no violations when it investigated. They also filed grievances with their union.
Otto and Public Works Director Ken Lader did not directly respond to requests for comment. Instead, county spokesperson Joni McAnally said in a written statement Wednesday that the county thanked the jury members for their work.
“The county recognizes and appreciates the time members of the jury spent giving their careful consideration of the facts in this case,” McAnally said in the statement. “The county is committed to providing a work environment free from unlawful discrimination and harassment for its employees, the public it serves and those with whom the county conducts business.”
The federal jury found that the county created a hostile and biased workplace under Washington state’s anti-discrimination laws and awarded each man $200,000. However, the jury did not find that the county violated federal civil rights laws.
“Our clients are tremendously gratified for a unanimous decision from the jury recognizing their claims for a hostile work environment against Clark County,” Seattle attorney Roger Townsend said in the release.
