Former Clerk Sues City for Gender Discrimination
A former clerk for the DeBary, Florida, city government has recently filed a lawsuit for gender discrimination and the hostile work environment she claims to have experienced as a result of her supervisor’s frequent sexist remarks. This is the second sex discrimination lawsuit filed against the City of DeBary in a year.
The clerk, Stacy Tebo, had worked for the city of DeBary for ten years when she and a coworker, Kassandra Blissett, filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in March of 2015. The complaint detailed the gender discrimination to which both Tebo and Blissett had been subjected as employees of the city, pointing in particular to then-city manager Dan Parrott. The complaint claimed that Parrott had created a compensation plan for city employees which provided a 12.54% increase in pay for male employees, but that provided only a 2.13% pay increase for the city’s female employees. Parrott and the city denied these claims, instead arguing that the raises were intended to make compensation for the city’s maintenance workers more competitive with market rates. Since more maintenance workers were male, and more administrative workers were female, Parrott argued, the raises appeared to be disproportionately beneficial to men. The EEOC declined to file suit based on the allegations in Tebo and Blissett’s complaint, which allowed the women to file their own lawsuits. Tebo was terminated within a month of filing the complaint with the EEOC, after a decade of well-reviewed work.
In her lawsuit, filed in federal court, Tebo accuses Parrott of creating a hostile work environment due to the disparate pay for men and women, as well as sexually discriminatory remarks made by Parrott on a regular basis. According to the suit, Parrott made remarks such as “women don’t think clearly because they are too emotional.” Additionally, Tebo claims that he would not hire more women because “there’s too much estrogen here.” Tebo claims that she was fired in retaliation for her complaint made to the EEOC, and is seeking to be reinstated to her former position, along with lost wages, other damages, and attorneys’ fees. Blissett also filed a lawsuit against the city earlier this year, based on gender discrimination and unlawful termination.
Parrott resigned abruptly in June of 2016, after the city became the subject of an investigation by the State Attorney’s Office for a possible violation of the Sunshine Law. Law Enforcement raided DeBary City Hall and seized thousands of emails between Parrott and city council members relating to a land deal being carried out by the city.
If you have experienced racial, ethnic, or gender discrimination at work, seek legal help in getting the compensation you’re owed for the illegal treatment you received by contacting the dedicated and aggressive Ocala wrongful termination and employment discrimination attorneys at James P. Tarquin, P.A. for a consultation, at 352-401-7671.