County Worker Receives $220,000 in Racial Harassment Lawsuit

A Latina office worker who said she was harassed for racial and religious reasons in a virtually all-black division of the Los Angeles County Health Services Department was awarded more than $220,000 by a Superior Court jury Monday after 12 days of deliberations.

A black co-worker who said she was mistreated after telling a hearing officer about a supervisor’s efforts to get rid of the Latina was awarded $99,000 by the same jury.

Gloria Lozano, who received the larger award on Monday, testified during the 25-day trial that several of her black co-workers conspired to intimidate her by banging loudly on her desk, insulting her with racial remarks and laughing at her.

She said that a supervisor, Patricia Thompson, pressured her to become a fundamentalist Christian and gave her a pamphlet declaring that she could not go to heaven because she is Roman Catholic.

According to testimony, Thompson converted an employee to “born-again” Christianity during a ceremony conducted in an office restroom, but later accused the woman of being possessed by demons. Witnesses said that during a subsequent exorcism ceremony, the employee’s desk, chair and computer terminal were smeared with hand lotion to banish the demons.

Lozano’s co-worker, Robbie Taylor, received the smaller award on Monday after testifying that she was accused by other black employees of being a traitor when she went to Lozano’s defense.

The Los Angeles Superior Court jury decided that Shirley Hill, a third plaintiff in the case who also had supported Lozano, had not been the victim of harassment or retaliation. The groundwork for the Superior Court lawsuit was laid in 1987, when the county Civil Service Commission ruled that Lozano had been the victim of racial and religious discrimination during her employment in the Health Services Department’s contracts and grants division.

In handing down its ruling, the commission adopted the substance of a report by hearing officer Sara Adler, who concluded that Lozano had been “subject to disparate treatment because of her race, nationality, ethnicity and/or her religion.”

Adler found that Lozano had barely avoided being laid off during a cutback despite seniority and that she had been denied equal opportunity for overtime work. Taylor told Adler that she would be offered a promotion if she would help Thompson “get rid of the Mexican.”

The Superior Court suit named the Health Services Department, Thompson and three other department officials--supervisor John Ricks, personnel officer Gwen Campuwed and division chief Richard Collins--as defendants.