State Senate pays $350K to former staffer who claimed she was raped

The state Senate has agreed to pay $350,000 to a former staffer who said she was raped, one of the largest payouts in the history of the Legislature.

The settlement, first reported last month in The Daily Journal, followed allegations by the woman that she was raped by another legislative staffer outside the Capitol in 2016 and then fired when her work suffered. The terms were obtained by another media outlet this week with a Legislative Open Records Act request. Jane Doe v. California State Senate, 00232257 (Sac. Super. Ct., filed May 2, 2018).

The woman sued for retaliation, discrimination and violations of the California Legislative Whistleblowers Protection Act. She claimed she was repeatedly denied accommodations to deal with the trauma of the incident, including requests to bar her alleged attacker from the Senate floor and other areas where she might encounter him.

"The result that we were able to achieve will make a significant difference in this former Capitol staffer's life," said her attorney, Micha Star Liberty of Liberty Law Office in Oakland. "But more importantly, it also sends a message to other victims of harassment, discrimination or retaliation, which is that if they come forward, the Senate will now compensate them for the harm it caused."

The attack was reported to the police. The man was never charged but no longer works for the Legislature.

The plaintiff will receive $280,000 in lost wages and other damages with the balance paying for her student loans, medical bills and career counseling. The sides filed a notice of proposed settlement in November. The court dismissed the case on Friday.

The Senate sought to have much of the case dismissed over the fall, filing a demurrer including claims of governmental immunity and that it could not be sued for an incident outside the workplace. But Sacramento County Superior Court Judge David I. Brown dismissed the motion in September.

A 2017 report by attorney Ryan C. Hughes of Tuple Legal in Los Angeles detailed at least $1.9 million in known settlements related in some way to sexual or gender harassment in the Legislature between 1994 and 2017.

Some of the settlements were for a few thousand dollars, and one was for nothing. Only one of these was higher than the amount won by Jane Doe -- $540,000 paid in 2003 to a woman who was harassed for breastfeeding at work.

Another Liberty client filed an amended complaint against the Senate on Dec. 31. That woman claims she was fired for reporting former Sen. Tony Mendoza's harassment of a young female intern. Brown rejected the Senate's claims of governmental immunity last month, allowing the claims to go forward. Ruelas v. California State Senate, 00230185 (Sac. Super. Ct., filed April 3, 2018).