ST. LOUIS – A woman has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District against St. Louis County for allegedly firing her for making complaints during her employment about the mistreatment of minorities.
The lawsuit against St. Louis County and County Executive Steve Stenger seeks more than $100,000.
Annette Slack filed a lawsuit on April 23 alleging she was fired in retaliation for complaints she made that minorities were being treated harsher than non-minorities. Slack was hired in April 2015 as the director of Community Empowerment and Diversity manager for the St. Louis County Executive’s Office, a department of St. Louis County.
Slack was terminated in February 2016. She claims she was fired after complaining that the Diversity program established to help minorities was “not being properly applied to help minorities." Slack alleges that during her employment, minorities “within the department were treated harsher and were not given the same access as non-minorities."
Slack claims that she was told the reason she was being fired was for having a second job, a violation of policy, but that the county did not follow its progressive discipline policy because “at no point was I disciplined or reprimanded for violation of the secondary employment policy.”
After filing charges with the district office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the county and Stenger for discrimination and retaliation, Slack received a Notice of the Right to Sue from the EEOC.
The complaint alleges that the county, “acted under color of law and intentionally, deliberately, maliciously and with willful disregard for the plaintiff’s rights to be free from race discrimination and retaliation and in deliberate disregard of right secured her under the Constitution of the United States.”
Slack is seeking a declaratory judgment as well as equitable relief and injunctive relief.
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri case number 4:18-cv-00647-AG