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Two women who worked at the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office until earlier this year notified the agency that they planned to sue, one alleging racism and retaliation and the other describing biased treatment because she was a new mother.
Both women filed tort claims notices with Multnomah County, saying they planned to sue unless the matter can be settled. One seeks $325,000 and the other $350,000.
The notices plunge District Attorney Nathan Vasquez into the same workplace discrimination fights that plagued his predecessor, Mike Schmidt. Vasquez used similar accusations from other women as cudgel in his successful bid to unseat Schmidt, accusing him during the 2024 campaign of “destroying” the culture of the DA’s office by treating female employees poorly.
While Vasquez defeated Schmidt chiefly by appealing to voters’ frustrations about downtown crime and squalor, he also capitalized on a state report that found “substantial evidence” of discrimination against a female employee, contributing to a perception that Schmidt was in over his head managing what amounts to Oregon’s largest law firm. The new filings suggest that this management task is challenging Vasquez, as well—and contain hints that bad blood from the campaign still lingers.
The tort claims notices were first reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Vasquez’s office denies the accusations.
In a notice filed on April 2, a lawyer for Jamila Williams, the former operations director for the DA’s office, says Williams endured harassment by fellow employees who questioned the intermittent leave time she took to care for her ailing mother. Williams had worked in the office for 21 years and was the all-time highest-ranking Black woman administrator.
“Subordinate employees started a campaign of micro-aggressions towards her,” lawyer Beth Creighton wrote, “questioning her whereabouts to her supervisors, questioning how she performed her job, calling her lazy and making unspecified accusations of non-responsiveness to emails and other inquiries. When confronted, the offending employees could not name any specifics and backed off from their complaints.”
Specifically, Williams says she was bullied and harassed by attorney Kirsten Snowden, who had a habit of “rolling her eyes when Ms. Williams expressed a difference of opinion.”
“Snowden has a history of her lack of commitment to the equity efforts of the DA’s office,” Creighton wrote on behalf of Williams. ”She thwarted directives to have her subordinates cancel non-essential hearings to permit training for implicit bias and micro-aggressions."
During the DA’s race, Williams backed Schmidt, and Snowden backed Vasquez, the notice says. After Vasquez won, he promoted Snowden to chief deputy district attorney, and “they increased hostility toward Jamila Williams,” the notice said.
In February, Vasquez moved non-white operations staff from exterior offices and into interior ones that had no windows, the notice alleges.
“Ms. Williams spoke up about the move and mentioned that it was not lost on her that she, as a woman of color at the executive level, was being asked to move,” the notice said.
Vasquez hired a chief of staff to “essentially” do the work Williams handled as operations manager, the notice said. Within months, Vasquez reorganized the office and eliminated Williams’ job, “the only position that was cut, despite having full funding in the budget.”
Creighton, Williams’ lawyer, wrote that her client would be willing to settle the matter for $350,000 and 18 months of health benefits.
Vasquez rejects Williams’ claim that any decisions were motivated by “race, gender, political affiliation, or any personal characteristic,” a spokesman said in a statement.
“Ms. Williams served this office with distinction for over 20 years, and we are grateful for her contributions,” Vasquez said in the same statement. “This office worked to support Ms. Williams during her transition, including an offer to return to MCDA in a different management position.”
Nineteen days after Williams filed her notice of a tort claim, former deputy DA Stephanie Rivera filed her own. Rivera alleges that the DA’s office under Vasquez failed to accommodate her nursing needs as a new mother.
Rivera went on maternity leave in July. In December, a month before she planned to return, she told a supervisor that her son was having trouble eating from a bottle. They agreed that Rivera would work remotely twice a week for a period of time, Rivera’s notice says.
But when Rivera returned on Jan. 2, she learned that the arrangement had become “an issue with upper management.” She could work part time, the DA’s office said, or she could work in the drug court program, which would require her to attend court remotely so she could pump breast milk or have a fellow deputy fill in when she had to pump in court.
Around the same time, Rivera learned that two deputy DAs she had helped train were being promoted while she was being skipped for the same move.
“On information and belief, I was skipped a rotation because I returned from maternity leave and needed an accommodation for my son’s and my health,” Rivera alleges.
Rivera and her supervisors kept trying to find a solution, she says. Working with her union leaders, she crafted a plan to work from home Tuesdays and Thursdays until June, with a check-in in May. The DA’s office said she could keep that schedule just until March.
The union proposal was reasonable, Rivera wrote. Union staff told her that other women had been offered more accommodation.
“Notably, these other female employees did not identify as BIPOC,” she wrote.
Rivera further alleges that the stress of the workplace dispute curtailed her ability to breastfeed her son, even as he struggled to drink from a bottle. “For these reasons, I was forced to tender my resignation.”
Rivera seeks $325,000.
The DA’s office denies that it discriminated against Rivera.
“The office worked with her and our human resources manager and provided her the schedule adjustments she initially requested,” the DA’s office said in a statement. “When she asked to extend them, the office offered a shorter extension with a plan to reassess. She resigned in response.”
“Our actions were not in any way based on her gender,” Vasquez said in the statement. “As reflected in the attached communication from her Chief Deputy, the office engaged with her and made efforts to support her. We appreciated her work and were disappointed by her decision to leave.”