Board of Public Utilities in KCK settles three discrimination lawsuits for nearly $400,000
Reality Check is a Star series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email realitycheck@kcstar.com.
The Board of Public Utilities in Kansas City, Kansas, has paid out nearly $400,000 for three discrimination lawsuits.
But Marlon Kerr, who received $275,000 in a December 2022 settlement, said it doesn’t feel like justice.
“I look at it like it was basically a payoff,” he said in a phone interview Thursday with The Star.
Kerr, who is Black, alleged that a white colleague called him the N-word. After filing a complaint, he walked into a break room and found a rope tied to the chair he was known to sit in.
He worked for the utility agency from 2008 until he was terminated in 2022. Kerr said he believes he was fired for speaking out and is doubtful that the culture will change.
“It is who you know, how you know them to be able to survive this company,” he said.
“It’s really cutthroat.”
According to documents obtained through an open records request, Johnell Walton got a $92,500 settlement and Anthony Garner Jr. received $20,000.
Walton was “scrutinized almost daily,” his lawyers wrote in his lawsuit, and was held to higher standards than other employees. In 2020, he was fired for bringing his grandchildren to a work facility. A white dispatcher, he said, brought his wife and daughter there days earlier.
Garner’s lawsuit said he was disciplined more harshly than his white counterparts and was removed from a lineman apprentice program, despite being “the fastest in several of the skill challenges.”
The settlements say that the Unified Government admits no liability.
The BPU did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuits or questions about how discrimination is dealt with at the agency.
Five discrimination lawsuits — three were filed last year and two that were filed this month against the BPU — remain ongoing in federal court.
This story was originally published January 26, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
