IOWA CITY, Iowa — A former organizer for Donald Trump in Iowa who filed a legal complaint accusing the campaign of gender discrimination has decided not to pursue a lawsuit, her attorney says.
Elizabeth Mae Davidson received a right-to-sue letter from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a requirement before suing an employer for alleged discrimination, attorney Dorothy O’Brien said. But Davidson, now a 28-year-old University of Iowa law student, is no longer interested in pursuing the case and opted not to bring a case against the campaign, she said.
“My client is not going to say another word about it,” O’Brien said.
Davidson’s complaint, filed in January 2016 days before the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, made national news and put Trump on the defensive. She alleged that male campaign employees were given better jobs, more opportunities and higher pay than female workers. She also accused Trump of commenting on her looks, saying he told her and another volunteer during an introduction in the summer of 2015 that “You guys could do a lot of damage.” Trump has denied making that remark and the campaign has called her complaints meritless.
The campaign fired Davidson, a part-time organizer who was based in Davenport, following an article in the New York Times that described her as “one of the campaign’s most effective organizers” in an otherwise amateurish operation. The article noted that Davidson had opened the campaign’s second field office and recruited dozens of precinct captains in Scott County, where her mother was then the Republican Party chairwoman.