Jury awards former Kansas City electrician nearly $800,000 in race discrimination suit
A jury on Friday awarded a former Kansas City electrician nearly $800,000 after it found the city discriminated against the worker, who is black, and retaliated against him after he complained.
The jury awarded Ronald Williams $160,000 on the retaliation claim, $126,000 on a hostile work environment claim and another $504,000 in punitive damages.
One of Williams’ attorneys, Rachel Rutter, noted that the $126,000 was equivalent to his supervisor’s salary.
The lawsuit was filed in Jackson County Circuit Court in 2018 and alleged Williams, a maintenance electrician, was not allowed to take a class that could have led to a promotion. The suit goes on to say Williams was punished when he contradicted a white electrician.
According to the lawsuit, the city violated the Missouri Human Rights Act during Williams’ employment as a maintenance electrician in the Water Services Department from 2011 to February 2017.
The lawsuit also alleges that, on more than one occasion, one of Williams’ supervisors said that “African American electricians were incompetent.”
In court filings, the city denied most of the allegations made.
The trial started last week, and attorneys finished their closing statements Wednesday.
In her closing, Rutter said “each and every one of us has the right to be free from discrimination.”
Rutter said that for the rest of his life, Williams will look back on feeling judged because of the color of his skin when he thinks about his time with the city.
She did acknowledge that another black employee did receive a promotion, but she said that employee did not file a complaint.
During the city’s closing statement, an attorney argued that the evidence did not support the idea that what happened to Williams was based on race. He also said that the city believed Williams disagreed with how the water department was being run.
He also said that Williams had an unsatisfactory work performance but there was no documentation for any discipline Williams received.
Before the jury was sent to deliberate, another attorney representing Williams, Dave Lunceford, used a display to note that if the city is not stopped, it will never do anything to fix discrimination issues.
On civil rights, he told the jury, “They either exist for all of us, or none of us.”
Another employment discrimination case against the city ended in a mistrial three weeks ago. In that case, a former Human Relations employee sued the city. It could come back to trial.
This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 6:04 PM.
