Discrimination case from senator’s Modesto office heading to trial

A judge has refused the California Senate’s request to throw out a discrimination lawsuit brought by an aide who was fired from Sen. Tom Berryhill’s Modesto office.

Douglas Miller, who is Latino, said he was sacked after complaining of a “racist, sexist and ageist” office culture, while Senate lawyers contend he was dismissed for misconduct.

Berryhill, R-Twain Harte, is not named as a defendant and did not fire Miller, who technically was a Senate employee although he had worked for Berryhill since 2006, when Berryhill was a state assemblyman.

Miller’s lawsuit, alleging discrimination and retaliation, said he was subjected to racial slurs and jokes based on race and others’ sexual orientation. His case is good enough to proceed to trial, scheduled to begin Jan. 30, Sacramento Superior Court Judge David Brown decided on Wednesday.

The “short timeline” between Miller’s complaint to a Senate personnel investigator and his firing raises the possibility that the discipline might have been retaliatory, Brown found. The judge also noted that the investigator allegedly became “angry and hostile” toward Miller rather than taking an interest in his story.

The investigator was looking into complaints raised by Miller’s co-worker after a July 2013 office argument that started with comments about San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s tattoos and whether he was a good role model. Stress in Berryhill’s office was high at the time, the lawsuit says, as the senator prepared to defend money-laundering charges brought by the California Fair Political Practices Commission; Berryhill and his brother, Bill, and Republican committees in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties were fined $40,000 for skirting contribution limits by illegally shifting $40,000 among the men’s campaigns, an administrative law judge concluded after a six-day trial.

However, Brown dismissed Miller’s claim that he was a victim of harassment, noting that “he participated ... by using racial slurs, laughing at discriminatory jokes, and engaging in ‘inappropriate workplace behavior.’ ” Miller claimed a co-worker called him a “fat little beaner,” but the judge said it’s not clear whether “he had used this term to refer to his own child.”

Tom Berryhill’s district office moved from Ripon to Modesto in 2011 and to Oakdale in 2014. A dispute over whether he would testify in Miller’s case led to Berryhill answering written questions for a pretrial deposition. Senate attorneys succeeded in blocking Senate sergeants-at-arms from testifying about “standards of conduct imposed by Senate leadership.”

This story was originally published December 29, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Discrimination case from senator’s Modesto office heading to trial."