KC pays $500,000 to settle discrimination lawsuit with ex-civil rights director
Kansas City will pay half a million dollars to the former director of civil rights and equal opportunity to settle a discrimination lawsuit.
Andrea Dorch filed a lawsuit against the city and former City Manager Brian Platt in 2024, alleging racial discrimination and whistleblower retaliation for questioning why minority workforce requirements were waived for a massive data center project in the Northland.
The City Council approved the $500,000 settlement on Thursday, adding another payout to the city’s till related to Platt’s four-year tenure.
Dorch claimed in the lawsuit that Platt told her in April 2023 that she could quit or be fired for allegedly violating the city’s rule that all employees live within the city limits. Dorch claimed that was a “pretexual” excuse, and that the city selectively enforced the residency rule to get rid of certain employees, particularly Black women like her.
Meanwhile, the city waived the residency requirement for Kathy Nelson, who is white, when she was tapped to lead the Greater Kansas City Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Andrea Dorch’s lawsuit claims
Dorch argued that she was fired because Platt and other city leaders were frustrated by her efforts to enforce required participation levels of minority- and woman-owned businesses on the $800 million data center development by Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
Without her knowledge, the city allowed the project to go forward without the ordinary requirements, Dorch said in the lawsuit. She claims that Platt reprimanded her for advocating to reverse the decision.
Shortly after she was reprimanded, Dorch claimed private investigators hired by the city began to follow her as part of an investigation to determine whether she was violating the residency requirement.
Dorch had listed a Kansas City address as her place of residence since 1994. She bought a house in Lee’s Summit in 2020, during a break in her employment with the city to work for the federal government.
Platt rehired her in 2021 to head the Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity Department. That required a background check that, according to the lawsuit, disclosed that she owned a home in Lee’s Summit. She continued to list a Kansas City address as her primary residence and used it for her vehicle registrations.
Firing leads to protests
Dorch’s firing led to protests from civil rights leaders who called for Platt to resign for creating a culture of discrimination at City Hall.
The city later fired Platt after losing in court over a separate lawsuit filed by former city communications director Chris Hernandez, who claimed he was demoted for resisting Platt’s suggestion to lie to local news media.
Mayor Quinton Lucas suspended Platt the day after a Jackson County jury awarded Hernandez nearly $930,000 in the whistleblower suit.
The city also quietly paid at least $500,000 to Platt through settlement and severance agreements.
