A Camas woman who filed a lawsuit last year in federal court alleging sex discrimination and retaliation against the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bonneville Power Administration has agreed to dismiss the suit after reaching a $130,000 settlement, according to her Vancouver attorney, Robert Milesnick.
Lori Lee Scott, 52, filed the lawsuit on Aug. 29, 2014, in U.S. District Court in Tacoma after filing an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint three years prior.
A four-day jury trial was scheduled to begin on Monday, Milesnick said in an email.
Instead, he said the parties conducted a private mediation earlier this month and reached an agreed settlement to all of Scott’s remaining claims.
According to the suit, Scott was the only female working in the maintenance garage at the BPA’s Ross Complex in Hazel Dell. She was hired by CIBER Inc., which at the time provided contract administrative support to the BPA, and was employed from Dec. 1, 2008, until April 29, 2011.
Scott claimed male supervisors had hostile attitudes toward her and made discriminatory remarks. She said one supervisor “treated her like a child,” as supported by testimony from another co-worker. She said the same supervisor would often stand too close to her, according to the suit.
Another supervisor allegedly threatened her with termination, told her she wasn’t of equal importance as the male garage mechanics, and said she needed to “fall in line or you’ll be out,” the suit said.
Scott’s supervisors said she was terminated in April 2011 because of a reorganization of positions, according to the suit.
Scott filed her complaint Aug. 17, 2011, and received notice later that year her complaint was dismissed. She then appealed and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission acknowledged it in January 2012.
In her suit, she alleged that the BPA failed to timely act on her appeal and that it wasn’t until September 2013 that the federal power marketing agency was ordered to investigate her claims.
Milesnick said in an email that his client hopes “her case shines some light on BPA’s role as a federal employer of more than 3,000 area workers and helps prompt BPA to change the way they treat their staffing firm employees, who are mostly administrative workers.”
Joel Scruggs, a spokesman with the BPA, said in an email that the settlement was reached by the Department of Justice, which defends federal agencies.
He declined to comment further on the case but said it had not yet been officially dismissed.
Scott’s suit also listed U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Colorado-based CIBER, Inc. However, CIBER, Inc. was later dropped from the suit, Milesnick said.
