Three former and current Multnomah County Library employees are suing the organization for discriminating against Black staff members, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Alicia Byrd, Cathy Parham and Victor Allen allege the library created a hostile work environment and retaliated against them for alleging racial discrimination. They are seeking about $942,000 for emotional harm and attorney’s fees, and are demanding a jury trial.
Rebecca Cambreleng, an attorney representing Byrd, Parham and Allen, said the state’s largest library system ignores Black voices.
“Race discrimination is occurring on every level and the policies in place to protect employees are actually being weaponized against the employees,” Cambreleng said. “It’s creating this environment where managers of color, and in this case Black employees specifically, are being discriminated against.”
Byrd declined to comment on the litigation. Parham and Allen did not respond to inquiries from The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Multnomah County spokesperson Julie Sullivan-Springhetti said the county does not comment on pending litigation or personnel matters.
Parham and Byrd were fired on Oct. 28 and April 5, respectively, and the “terms of conditions” of Allen’s employment were changed March 8 – all after they had filed complaints alleging racial discrimination by other employees at Multnomah County Library, according to the lawsuit.
Byrd was hired in 2008 as an outreach specialist and received an employee recognition award in 2014 from the county for her work promoting reading among children and adults. She was the first and only Black employee to work as a library outreach specialist, and “almost immediately was met with acts of aggression, hostile behavior, and outright physical intimidation,” the lawsuit states.
After Byrd filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Multnomah County Library in April 2019, an outside investigator determined one of Byrd’s coworkers had called her “scary,” that Byrd was being scrutinized more than white employees, that a coworker had physically intimidated her while she was using the restroom and that another coworker had called her an expletive, according to the lawsuit.
The library created an employee safety plan for Byrd, allowing her to adjust her schedule, call into meetings remotely and be escorted from the building in order to protect her from her two coworkers, the lawsuit states.
On Feb. 14, Byrd was put on administrative leave and told she was being investigated for claims that she intentionally falsified her timesheet based on door swipe data from the front doors of a library headquarters building in Northeast Portland.
Byrd denied the claims, saying her employee safety plan allowed her to work out of different parts of the building and at different times than her coworkers.
She was fired April 5.
Parham was hired as a youth librarian in November 2021. In April 2022, she received an email from another worker that Parham described as racist. She brought the email and her concerns to her supervisor, but he did not take any action, according to the lawsuit.
Parham sent an email to human resources and the equity and inclusion manager, and an investigator opened an official investigation into her complaint on July 18. Nine days later, Parham’s supervisor told her there were issues with her time management, and her subsequent performance reviews soured.
In a September 2022 meeting, Parham told her supervisors it felt like she “had a target on her back” since she filed the formal complaint.
She was fired on Oct. 28, 2022, due to performance issues.
Allen was hired as a safety and security manager in May 2022, and was tasked with handling a perceived uptick in violence and criminal activity near library branches.
In November 2022, Allen went to the Kenton Library in North Portland to review an incident report that had been filed there. The white woman who had filed the incident report was working remotely, but wrote an email several days later complaining about Allen’s visit, saying she was “unsettled” and it “freaked her out” that Allen had visited the branch without advance notice, calling his behavior “scary and predatory.”
Allen filed a complaint about the woman’s email, and an investigator found in March that the woman’s behavior “did harm” but didn’t violate any county personnel rules.
On March 8, Allen went to the Northwest Library branch while a white employee was in the building. He received a text about two hours later from a human resources worker saying his presence was making the other employee uncomfortable and asking him to work at a different branch. Allen reported the request to the investigator, saying he was being targeted because of his race.
Less than a week after filing the complaint, Allen said he was told he was offered the “wrong” type of employment and would now be an at-will employee.
-- Catalina Gaitán, cgaitan@oregonian.com, @catalingaitan_
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