‘Abusive’: 5 lawsuits allege racial discrimination in KCK’s Board of Public Utilities
Marlon Kerr went straight to his boss in March 2020 after a white colleague at the Board of Public Utilities in Kansas City, Kansas, allegedly called him the N-word.
One of two field representatives who are Black, Kerr told his supervisor that if he had made similar comments, he would have been fired on the spot. The same coworker, just days earlier, had also told him to “get his Black ass to work.” Kerr’s supervisor, a white woman, said she would take care of it.
“It hit home,” Kerr said. “That’s not my name. That’s not my identification on my employee badge. ... That’s not on my paychecks.”
Weeks passed. Kerr called Human Resources and learned his manager did not report the incident, which flew in the face of company policy, according to a lawsuit he has brought against the electric utility company, known as the BPU. Kerr then filed the complaint himself.
The next day, Kerr walked into a break room and found a threatening sight, he said: a rope tied to the chair he was known to sit in. An employee of 12 years, he wondered who he could trust.
Kerr is now among four Black BPU employees who, in the last 15 months, have filed federal lawsuits against the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, alleging they faced racial discrimination from colleagues, hostile work environments created by supervisors or targeted investigations. A fifth lawsuit has also been filed by an employee who was terminated.
In one of the lawsuits, lawyers for Sterling Owens, whose job description is electric troubleman, said the BPU subjected him to intense surveillance after wrongly accusing him of living outside of Wyandotte County, which would violate policy. BPU’s own data shows the agency disproportionately investigates employees of color, his attorneys said.
Owens’ evidence includes an allegation that an HR employee called the Kansas City, Kansas, home that Owens said he was living in “a shack.” Evidence compiled by his lawyers permits “a reasonable inference” that the months-long residency investigation was racially motivated, a federal judge wrote last month in a court order.
David Mehlhaff, the BPU’s chief communications officer, said the BPU could not comment on pending litigation, but noted that senior management was aware of the claims. The BPU, which says it has 482 full-time employees, does not “target” any group for investigations, he added.
“BPU is always looking at ways to enhance our company’s culture including employee surveys, training, exploring employee recognition programs and offering a variety of ways to communicate with our employees,” Mehlhaff wrote in an email.
Kerr, who has worked at the BPU since 2008, does not think employees of color are supported. He believes his supervisor was trying to shove a racist comment “under the rug” to protect his white colleague, who was not terminated.
“It hurts,” Kerr told The Star. “It’s a slap in the face when you see it every day. Every day. It’s like, when do you get a break?”
‘Scrutinized almost daily’
In his separate lawsuit, Owens said the BPU hired a private company to surveil him after receiving a report that he may have lived in Leavenworth County.
Owens was surveilled 14 times in 2019 and 2020, which his lawyers equated to “constant spying, stalking and monitoring.” It included “tailing” him to and from work as well as following his kids, according to his lawsuit.
An employee since 2013, Owens learned of the investigation months into the surveillance. He provided the BPU with dozens of documents that included his driver’s license and voter registration to prove he lived in Wyandotte County, according to court records. But the BPU ordered more surveillance, his attorneys claimed. Owens experienced anxiety and took time off.
About a year after the investigation began, the BPU said it could not disprove Owens’ residency and would not discipline him. The agency’s HR director testified that it cost the BPU more than $7,000 to hire a private company, Chief Investigations, to surveil Owens, the most the BPU has ever spent to investigate an employee accused of a residency violation, according to a pre-trial order in the case.
In court records, the BPU said it has used surveillance to investigate other employees, regardless of their race. The agency maintained the investigation of Owens was not discriminatory.
Mehlhaff, the BPU’s spokesman, said the agency believes hiring outside investigators for residency-related claims is “a good practice.”
The public utility, which provides electricity and water to tens of thousands of customers in Wyandotte and Johnson counties, has terminated four employees for residency violations since 2015: two who were white, one who was Asian and one who was Black, court records show. Another 22 employees were investigated for violations, 13 of whom were employees of color.
“More than half of the employees investigated for violations are people of color,” Judge Kathryn Vratil wrote in a June order denying BPU’s attempt to have one of the cases thrown out.
Some of the pending lawsuits have been set for trial. The UG has denied wrongdoing in each case.
The men’s accusations are reminiscent of claims of racial discrimination within other agencies in the region, including the Kansas City Fire Department and the Kansas City Police Department. Both departments were the focus of recent Star investigations.
In one of the BPU lawsuits, equipment operator Anthony Garner Jr. 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.”
BPU records show that just two employees have been involuntarily dismissed from the program — and that both were Black, Garner’s attorneys contend. The scoring system, they said in court records, is “entirely subjective” and based on “feelings.”
Lawyers for the BPU argued that Garner was not removed because of his race or age, but because he “did not demonstrate the necessary skills” to be a lineman, a hazardous job.
Attorney Bert Braud, who represents four of the men who are suing, said he would be “concerned” when comparing representation at the BPU, particularly in positions like lineman, to Wyandotte County’s demographics. Just one of the BPU’s 35 linemen is Black, he wrote in a recent filing in Garner’s case.
“The reasonable inferences to be drawn from (Garner’s) evidence … is that an African American has little to no chance of becoming a lineman through the BPU apprenticeship program,” Garner’s attorneys argued.
In a separate lawsuit, electric troubleman Johnell Walton said he was summoned to meetings about his “bad body language” — something for which only minorities were criticized. He was “scrutinized almost daily,” his lawyers wrote, and was held to higher standards than other employees.
Walton alleges he was fired in 2020 for bringing his grandchildren to a work facility. A white dispatcher, he said, brought his wife and daughter there days earlier.
The BPU has faced claims of racial discrimination before. That included several lawsuits, brought by more than 37 people, who alleged the BPU had a practice of discrimination against Black employees in promotions and firings from 1977 to at least 2003, when those suits were filed.
Then in 2013, electrician Phillip Hayes, who is Black, alleged in a lawsuit that he was subjected to discrimination when, several years earlier, a white BPU employee showed up to a retirement party in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. The party was attended by dozens of colleagues, his lawyers wrote.
A judge later threw out Hayes’ lawsuit, noting that the BPU said it terminated him for stealing company property, not because he complained about his coworker. The BPU’s HR director said the employee Hayes reported was disciplined with a one-week suspension, a year of probation and “mandatory sensitivity training,” according to court records.
The Star has filed a Kansas Open Records Act request seeking information about the BPU’s settlements stemming from complaints of racial discrimination.
The Star’s Bill Lukitsch contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
