Federal lawsuit filed by former Boise library worker who claims LGBTQ discrimination
A former Boise Public Library employee who claims they were sexually harassed and discriminated against has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Boise.
Jax Perez, who worked as a library assistant at the Hillcrest branch, sued the city of Boise, then-Library Director Kevin Booe and eight other employees with the library and the city. The lawsuit contends that the city punished Perez for being LGBTQ and for objecting to alleged harassment and abuse.
“The city of Boise and its employees forced Jax to choose between enduring anti-LGBTQ attacks or being fired — all while, ironically, flying the Pride flag and disingenuously pledging no tolerance for harassment or discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation,” Perez’s attorney, Ritchie Eppink, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, wrote in the suit filed June 11.
The lawsuit also claims that city employee training was inadequate to prevent violations of anti-discrimination statutes.
“The city was deliberately indifferent to the substantial risk that its policies were inadequate to prevent violations of law by its employees and to the known or obvious consequences of its failure to train its employees adequately,” Eppink wrote.
Perez is seeking an amount to be determined at trial, along with punitive damages against Booe, Sarah Kelley-Chase, the library’s public services manager, and Sarah Martin, a senior manager in the city’s Human Resources Department. Perez claims that those three, along with other unnamed employees, acted against them.
Bonnie Shelton, a city spokesperson, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Mayor Lauren McLean previously noted that the incidents involving Perez took place before she became mayor.
“We are committed to ensuring that we’re an equitable and welcoming place for all employees,” McLean said in May.
Perez, 29, is a nonbinary, transgender person who does not identify as a man or woman. They said they were discriminated against because of that.
Perez claims Booe took action to have them fired after a June 19, 2019, incident in which Perez said a hostile library patron “insulted and dehumanized” them. The man objected to a Pride display that Perez organized at the library, which included rainbow pins that were handed out.
The man told Perez that he objected to the pins being made available to his children. He equated giving out the pins to handing out marijuana pins to children and described Gay Pride and marijuana as “vices.” He tossed the pins his children had picked up on the counter in front of Perez, who worked at the library from May 2016 to Nov. 20, 2020.
“As a member of the LGBTQ community myself I am sorry that you feel that way,” Perez told the man.
That night, the man sent an email to library staff saying he felt he was ridiculed for his beliefs and demanding an apology.
The next morning, Perez reported the harassment in an email to their supervisor. Perez said the harassment left them “extremely shaken up and scared,” adding they “haven’t had to deal with homophobia in real life to my face in quite a while.”
Booe was sent a copy of the email, and instead of supporting his employee, the lawsuit claims, he told Perez’s supervisor and Kelley-Chase to have an “exit strategy” for Perez prepared by 9 a.m. the next morning.
“I want her out of (Boise Public Library),” Booe allegedly wrote.
Perez claimed that Booe continually refused to refer to them by gender neutral pronouns, which they had requested beginning in 2018.
“The city’s employment policies make equally clear that the city does not tolerate sexual or gender harassment, including harassment based on a person’s gender or sexual orientation,” Eppink wrote. “The city considers such harassment to be a ‘serious offense.’ ”
The Hillcrest library removed the pins after Booe suggested that the Pride display and the pins might have breached the library’s “mission and ethics.”
The man who objected to the display returned the next day and stared at Perez for 10 to 15 minutes in a manner that Perez said made them uncomfortable. Fearing for their safety, Perez said they went to a back room.
On June 24, 2019 — during the final week of Pride Month — Perez was handed a “Notice of Intent to Discipline.” It outlined their interactions with the library patron who objected to the display and it also criticized Perez for responding on their personal Facebook page to derogatory comments on the display that appeared in a Facebook neighborhood group.
Perez called the notice “directly homophobic” and not in line with city policies supporting the LGBTQ community. The notice was followed by a formal written warning on July 16, 2019. The warning was written by Martin and approved by Kelley-Chase, the lawsuit said.
After receiving the letter, Perez filed an internal equal employment opportunity complaint. The city found no violations in investigating that complaint and a later appeal from Perez. It upheld issuance of the warning letter in October 2019.
Perez subsequently filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Idaho Human Rights Commission, alleging sex discrimination and retaliation.
On April 30, 2020, the Human Rights Commission found probable cause that Perez was sexually harassed. A conciliation process to resolve the matter is pending.
Booe declined to comment after that ruling.
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