Maryland Federal Court Refuses to Dismiss Case:

The first Black, female bus inspector for the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA), experienced severe racial harassment while performing her duties. She faced threats from white bus operators, including being threatened with a bear taser, a snake, and a guard dog. One operator called her the N-word, and she was even told to urinate in a bucket because restrooms were “for white people only.”

When she reported these incidents to her white supervisor, he dismissed her concerns, saying the bus operators “just needed to get used to her.” The supervisor himself contributed to the hostile work environment, telling the former bus inspector not to ride in an MVA vehicle with a Black colleague because it would “look strange” and stating he’d never hire another woman. Other coworkers referred to her as “it” and “Whoopi Goldberg.”

In December 2018, she filed an internal discrimination complaint detailing this harassment. Shortly after, her supervisor asked about filing defamation charges against her. She then took medical leave from January to May 2019. Within a month of her return, her supervisor claimed to discover that she had falsified mileage and bus inspection records—an allegation she denies—and she was fired.

The Employment Law Firm, LLC effectively opposed MVA’s attempt to dismiss the case. U.S. District Judge Brendan A. Hurson ruled in his Order, rejecting the MVA’s request for summary judgment, relied on evidence of several suspicious circumstances: the unusually rapid discovery of the former employee’s alleged offense, her supervisor’s involvement in the investigation, and the fact that an Asian colleague facing similar accusations was not subjected to the same surveillance and kept his job.

(The case is captioned as Gibson v. MVA and is proceeding to trial this fall.)

On August 15, 2017, The Employment Law Firm, LLC won a major victory for its client, James Coleman, before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In *Coleman v. Duke*, 867 F.3d 204, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 15179 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 15, 2017), the D.C. Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of his lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security brought under the anti-retaliation provisions of § 704 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §2000e-3. The D.C. Circuit reinstated his unlawful retaliation claim surrounding a promotion denial and counseling letters.

Coleman v. Duke

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