Women’s Sacramento protests draw attention to lawsuits, stalled legislation

SACRAMENTO — Recent allegations of sexual harassment in California’s Capitol may be a surprise to some.

Not to attorney Mary-Alice Coleman or Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore.

The two women don’t know each other. But each has been fighting a separate battle for years to draw attention to harassment of Capitol staff.

Coleman has filed multiple personnel lawsuits against the Legislature. In April, the principal with Mary-Alice Coleman & Associates in Davis won a $100,000 sexual harassment settlement for the one-time chief of staff of former Assemblyman Steve Fox, D-Palmdale.

That case has been in the news this week after more than 140 female legislators, lobbyists and staffers signed a letter saying they too had been sexually harassed by powerful men in Sacramento.

“I think this is wonderful,” Coleman said. “People have finally said, ‘This is it, this is enough.’”

For Coleman, sexual harassment — as terrible as it is — is part of a larger story about a workforce that lacks whistleblower protections enjoyed by other public sector workers.

Melendez, meanwhile, has carried four separate bills to give whistleblower protections to Capitol staff.

“It saddens me that it took something like this to get the bill some more attention,” Melendez said.

Her latest effort, AB 403, would prohibit legislators and staff from retaliating or interfering with employees who make protected disclosures of workplace misconduct. Penalties include a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail.

She plans to make a renewed push next year to pass AB 403. While the legislation already applies to sexual harassment, Melendez said she plans to add language to explicitly address those issues.

AB 403 sailed through the Assembly on a 77-0 vote in May. It stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

So did her last three bills.

According to a June bill analysis written by Appropriations Committee staff: “Related Legislation: AB 1788 (Melendez, 2016), AB 289 (Melendez, 2015) and AB 2065 (Melendez, 2014) were all substantially similar to this bill. All three bills were held under submission on the suspense file of this committee.”

The appropriations committee in each house reviews bills that may have a high price tag or fiscal impact. The analysis said AB 403 “could result in a potential increase” in costs, but didn’t offer an estimate.

The chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee is Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens. He could not be reached for comment.

“If they were to come back and say this would cost us a lot of money, that would say they think there will be a lot of complaints,” said James Mayer, CEO of California Forward, a key bill supporter. “If there is nothing to worry about, this won’t cost a lot of money. This isn’t a fiscal issue, and they know that.”

Mayer said there may be a different reason the Legislative Employee Whistleblower Protection Act stalls in appropriations each year. When a bill is placed on the committee’s “suspense file,” it can die without a debate or a vote.

“This is part of this bigger context where the Legislature has imposed all kind of rules on other people that they exempt themselves from,” Mayer said. “A culture develops that allows this kind of behavior to persist.”

The benefits of workforce protections are visible across the state civil services, he said. Regular reports from the Bureau of State Audits sometimes uncover serious wrongdoing. More often, Mayer said, they show violations like an employee making calls related to a side business while at work.

By contrast, the Capitol women’s letter alleged groping, threats and blacklists — though it didn’t name any alleged perpetrators. One woman who signed the letter later told a media outlet a “current legislator” masturbated in front of her against her will.

Coleman’s client, Kathleen Finnigan, alleged sexual harassment, wrongful retaliation, and wrongful termination by former Assemblyman Fox. Finnigan v. California State Assembly, 00168938 (Sac. Super. Ct. filed Sept. 15, 2014).

In two of Coleman’s recent cases, the plaintiffs are male. Each alleges they were illegally forced to do campaign work on the clock, then retaliated against when they complained. Other allegations involve intimidation and racist insults. Miller v. California State Senate, 00170071 (Sac. Super. Ct. filed Oct. 10, 2014), settled in January. Timothy G. Yeung, who represented the Senate as a partner with Renne Sloan Holtzman Sakai LLP in Sacramento, has said the worker involved was guilty of wrongdoing and filed a complaint “to save himself.”

A third case, Christian Koszka v. California State Assembly, 00199407 (Sac. Super. Ct. filed Aug. 25, 2016), remains active. “It’s still in discovery, which is where these fights take place,” Coleman said. “They don’t want to produce documentation we’ve been demanding.”

A whistleblower statute, Coleman said, could help make it easier to obtain evidence and depositions.

The Office of the Legislative Counsel is in charge of defending lawsuits against legislators, but is generally unable to comment on litigation.