According to records, Multnomah County has agreed to pay $250,000 to resolve a complaint filed by a former library employee who claimed she and other employees were subjected to racial discrimination at work.
Last month, Alicia Byrd and the county came to an agreement.
In 2023, she was one of three former library workers who filed a combined lawsuit against the county, claiming that it discriminated against Black employees. According to court documents, the other two workers, Victor Allen and Cathy Parham, have since brought their own cases against the county.
Library spokesperson Shawn Cunningham declined to comment on the open cases or the terms of the settlement.
The provision of exceptional library services to the community continues to be the library’s top focus, he stated in a statement.
The lawyer for all three employees, Rebecca Cambreleng, declined to comment on the deal on Tuesday.
In May 2023, Byrd, Parham, and Allen filed the complaint, requesting $942,000 for legal fees and mental distress. According to the lawsuit, all three said they were subjected to retribution after reporting alleged racial discrimination by other library staff.
Byrd began working with the library this year as an outreach consultant for Books2U, a children’s reading program, in 2008. She received an employee recognitionaward in 2014for her work promoting reading among children and adults.
According to the lawsuit, she filed a complaint against the county in April 2019 alleging racial discrimination after being transferred to a different position as a result of budget constraints. According to the lawsuit, an external inquiry into her complaint revealed that Byrd’s coworkers referred to her as frightening, that she was scrutinized more than white employees, that one of them had physically threatened her while she was using the restroom, and that another coworker had called her an expletive. In a response to the case, the county attested to the accuracy of the investigation’s description.
According to the lawsuit, the library responded by placing Byrd on an employee safety plan to control her interactions with two of her coworkers. According to the lawsuit, it enabled her to change her schedule, participate in meetings from a distance, and be taken out of the building to keep her safe from her coworkers. But in the case, she said that she continued to experience discrimination and that management mostly disregarded the safety plan in the years that followed.
The lawsuit claims that in February 2023, the library placed Byrd on administrative leave and informed her that she was under investigation for allegedly purposefully fabricating her timesheet using door swipe data from Northeast Portland library buildings.
According to court filings, Byrd claimed that her employee safety plan permitted her to work from different areas of the facility at different times than her colleagues. According to the lawsuit, Byrd was fired by the county on April 5, 2023, after other employees complained that she wasn’t in her workspace when her shift began. After repeatedly complaining about racial discrimination, Byrd claimed it was reprisal.
On January 14 of this year, the county and Byrd came to a quarter-million dollar settlement. Byrd acknowledged that she had no other concealed job injuries and consented to abandon her case as part of the settlement. According to the agreement, the payment does not constitute the county’s admission of fault.
The county s legal battle with library employees is not over yet.
In April 2022, Parham, a former youth librarian, complained that a colleague sent her a racist email. According to her claim, superiors failed to respond to the email. In July 2022, the county’s Complaints Investigation Unit started looking into her allegation. According to the lawsuit, Parham claimed she was told she had problems managing her time nine days later. According to the lawsuit, she was fired on October 28 of that year for performance-related reasons after subsequent performance reports worsened.
In October, she and Allen each brought their own cases against the county.
Allen was hired as a safety and security manager in May 2022. He asserts that the county did nothing to shield him and other staff members from harassment by individuals who came to the library to commit crimes, and that staff members expressed discomfort with his presence at library branches without providing a clear explanation. Allen said that because of his race, he was being singled out.
According to the lawsuit, the county’s internal investigations section determined that the employee’s actions had valid, non-discriminatory explanations.
According to Allen’s lawsuit, he was let go on March 1, 2024, since his position was no longer beneficial to the county. Allen alleges that when he reported prejudice, the county retaliated against him.
Austin De Dios reports on programs, politics, and other topics in Multnomah County. You can reach him at @AustinDeDios, [email protected], or 503-319-9744.
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