By Laura Bauer
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City woman who worked for the Missouri Department of Corrections for more than three decades says she was harassed and targeted before being unjustly terminated.
In a recently-filed lawsuit, Melanie Austin, who spent 34 years at the department, alleges she faced race and age discrimination, as well as retaliation and a hostile work environment.
“Despite Plaintiff’s more than 30-year tenure with Defendant, in Plaintiff’s final year, management subjected Plaintiff to scrutiny and pretextual write-ups in an effort to terminate her employment,” the suit said.
Austin wants a jury trial.
Karen Pojmann, communications director for the Missouri Department of Corrections, declined to answer questions The Star sent in an email.
“The department doesn’t comment on pending litigation,” she said.
Austin, who began working at the Department of Corrections in June 1990, was terminated in November of last year, records show.
David A. Lunceford, a Lee’s Summit attorney who represents Austin, did not return a call for comment.
The suit alleges that Austin’s race — she is African American — “directly contributed to and caused Defendant’s decisions to harass, discriminate against and/or treat Plaintiff differently than Plaintiff’s co-workers.” Her age, it said, also contributed to her poor treatment. She was born in 1961.
Each of the four counts in the suit — for age and race discrimination, hostile work environment and illegal retaliation — detailed the impact the alleged treatment had on the former corrections worker.
“As a direct and proximate result of Defendant’s unlawful conduct, Plaintiff has suffered, and will continue to suffer, damages including past and future lost wages and benefits; detrimental job record; career damage and diminished career potential,” the suit said, noting the experience had also caused mental and emotional distress.
Denied due process?
According to the lawsuit, in April 2024 Austin was “investigated for a false and misleading allegation regarding an alleged comment made by (Austin) during a mandatory training session. “ Austin said she did not make the comment “alleged by the complainants,” the suit said.
From there, the issues at the department continued.
When Austin’s office was being relocated to a downtown Kansas City location in June 2024, Austin was “forced to operate that day without a work station,” the suit alleges. She told a DOC employee, referred to as S.A., that because of that she could not assign cases that day.
“S.A. then attempted to drop the cases at Plaintiff’s feet in a public and humiliating manner,” the suit said. Though Austin didn’t have a work station that day, she was able to assign cases from another supervisor’s office, according to the lawsuit.
Immediately before Austin’s June 26 hearing on the allegation regarding a comment during a training session, she was given another write up, this one for the workstation incident.
“The write-up alleged that Plaintiff violated policy by not completing the case assignments provided to her,” the suit said, “even though Plaintiff had in fact completed the assignments.”
She was told at the time, the suit said, that “the new write up” wouldn’t be a part of the disciplinary hearing. Yet when she received the “disciplinary recommendations” from the hearing findings, that new incident was included, the suit said.
In August 2024, Austin received a memo from a division director, referred to as J.M., telling her she would be suspended without pay for a week “based on the new write-up,” which she was given right before the disciplinary hearing.
“Plaintiff was denied due process with respect to the moving incident because Plaintiff received the allegation immediately before the June 26, 2024, hearing,” the suit said, “and was never given an opportunity to defend herself before being issued a weeklong unpaid suspension.”
Austin told the division director her concerns that she was suspended for something she never received a hearing for, and the suit alleges that the director told her he could “impose sanctions on anything.”
Issue with probation violation hearing
The suit further details that once Austin returned from suspension, she was called into a meeting and told there had been a problem with a probation violation hearing.
“Before Plaintiff was forced to leave on suspension, Plaintiff had signed a report written by a subordinate that resulted in a judge placing a defendant in custody,” the lawsuit said. “While Plaintiff was on suspension, an issue was discovered with the report.”
Austin met with the prosecutor and appeared at a court hearing.
“Plaintiff acknowledged that the report contained an error, but the defendant’s custody status was not a mistake because the defendant had violated his probation by attempting to contact the victim in violation of a restraining order,” the suit said.
“For the safety of the victim, the prosecutor requested that the defendant remain in custody, to which Plaintiff agreed.”
After that hearing, a younger employee who had attended the first hearing while Austin was on suspension, “expressed frustration” over the ruling, the suit said. That employee said Austin “made her appear incompetent in front of the judge.”
During a meeting between the employee and Austin, the employee and a supervisor “claimed Plaintiff was the main reason the judge placed the defendant in custody, accusing Plaintiff of violating the defendant’s rights and probation and parole policy, even though it was the prosecutor who acted to keep the defendant in custody,” the suit said.
Austin ended up getting “another write-up” regarding the situation and was notified that “a disciplinary hearing was scheduled to occur later that same day.”
In November, Austin was alerted her employment would be terminated. The alleged grounds for Plaintiff’s termination were “unprofessional conduct” and violation of policy.
“However, in the last five years, Plaintiff had only two alleged incidents of unprofessional conduct: one in 2021 and the June 2024 incident that resulted in her September 2024 unpaid suspension,” the suit said. “The termination letter further relied on two incidents from more than 20 years earlier, one in 1994 and one in 2000, as additional grounds for termination.
“... It is evident Defendant sought Plaintiff’s removal and used pretextual writeups to subject Plaintiff to severe discipline and, ultimately, termination of Plaintiff’s more than 30 years of service.”
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