Oregon Department of Justice Civil Rights Chief Sues His Own Agency For Violating His Civil Rights

Erious Johnson's complaint claims DOJ agent targeted him and agency did nothing in response.

As the director of civil rights for the Oregon Department of Justice, Erious Johnson is responsible for protecting the rights of all Oregonians.

It's somewhat ironic, then, that Johnson today filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Eugene alleging that his own agency violated his civil rights.

In the lawsuit, filed against Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, her top aides and her agency, Johnson accuses his boss and his colleagues of depriving him of his civil rights and discriminating against him because he is African-American. (Disclosure: Rosenblum is married to the co-owner of WW's parent company.)

The lawsuit stems from a Sept. 30, 2015, "threat assessment" of Johnson prepared by a DOJ criminal investigator.

That investigator, James Williams, allegedly targeted Johnson because of his use of the Black Lives Matter hashtag, and mistook his tweets about the rap group Public Enemy for more sinister communications. Johnson alleges that Williams' supervisors and Rosenblum failed to train Williams properly or respond appropriately to the report he prepared.

The DOJ lawyer who oversaw Williams, Darin Tweedt, was subsequently moved to an office three doors down from Johnson's. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages and attorney's fees, says DOJ officials' "conduct toward Johnson demonstrated a wanton, reckless or callous indifference to the constitutional rights of Johnson."

Today Johnson's attorney Beth Creighton, held a press conference on steps of the federal courthouse in Portland and issued the following statement:

“Although the community called for accountability—a year later and DOJ has taken no action to address the atmosphere that fostered such profiling. Regardless of the Attorney General’s purported outrage, in the past year, there have been no trainings for anti-racial profiling. No trainings for diversity. No trainings for cultural competency. And no trainings for anti-bias to ensure that such violations will not occur in the future.”

It’s not quite true that nothing’s changed. Last night, on the eve of Johnson’s lawsuit being filed, The Oregonian reported that DOJ had fired James Williams, the agent who allegedly profiled Johnson. The story did not include the date when then firing occurred.

“It’s that interesting that The Oregonian story came out last night two hours after we issued notification that we were holding a that we were holding a press conference on the courthouse steps today,” Creighton says.

DOJ spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson says Rosenblum told The Oregonian about Williams’ firing a couple of weeks ago in an interview and that DOJ did not push the story last night. “I can see where people might jump to conclusions but that is not the case,” Edmunson says.

Edmunson added the agency will have no comment on Johnson’s lawsuit but provided this statement on the underlying situation:

“The Attorney General considers Mr. Johnson a valued member of her inner circle staff, as he serves as her outreach director to diverse communities throughout the state. Since the unfortunate incident involving the digital search of Mr. Johnson’s public tweets, the Attorney General has taken several personnel actions. Primarily, the investigator who conducted the search was terminated over the summer, the chief counsel for the criminal division was replaced, and the special agent in charge of the criminal justice division left the Oregon Department of Justice and has recently been replaced, effective this week. In addition, cultural competency and implicit bias training throughout DOJ will begin next month, starting with the Criminal Justice Division under the leadership of the new agent-in-charge and new chief counsel.”

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