A Black sergeant with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation has cleared a major legal hurdle in her six-year fight against the agency, with a judge ruling this past Friday that two of her harassment claims can proceed to trial. Sgt. Karen Pewitt alleges the bureau operates like a good old boys club that bullies, intimidates and mutes personnel who raise equity concerns. Her trial is scheduled to begin September 14.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis dismissed three of Pewitt's harassment and hostile work environment causes of action on August 14, while allowing two others tied to her hostile work environment allegations to move forward, according to MyNewsLA.com. Pewitt, who was hired into the bureau in February 1999, filed her lawsuit in April 2020, naming Los Angeles County, former District Attorney Jackie Lacey and roughly a dozen individual supervisors as defendants, per an earlier account from MyNewsLA.com.
Pewitt claims Lacey, the first Black female district attorney in Los Angeles County history, was among her alleged harassers. She also alleges that supervisors yelled at her because she is a Black female, and that employees were labeled problems for reporting misconduct, sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation or other workplace abuses. According to her lawsuit, suppression tactics were passed down from one administration to another, and staff who spoke up were left feeling they had no protection from retaliation.
A Case Narrowed Over Six Years
Friday's ruling is not the first time a judge has pared down Pewitt's case. In a December 2022 ruling in the same litigation, Duffy-Lewis dismissed Pewitt's causes of action for disparate treatment and discrimination based on race, sex and age, along with her retaliation claim, while letting harassment-related claims move forward, according to KFI AM 640. That left the case, which originally included multiple claims and defendants, sharply narrowed heading into this year's proceedings.
The dispute now set for trial centers on whether the Bureau of Investigation created an unconstitutionally hostile environment and failed to prevent workplace harassment, a much narrower question than the broad discrimination and retaliation allegations Pewitt raised at the outset. Her court filings detail specific incidents she says formed a pattern, including an alleged 2012 groping incident by a fellow bureau employee at a work event and a 2009 incident involving a viral workplace video depicting fictitious law enforcement officers using homophobic slurs against leadership without management intervention, the outlet reports. Pewitt has said she worked without issue for her first decade at the bureau before detecting systemic hostility toward women beginning in 2009.
Statute of Limitations at the Center of the Fight
Much of the legal battle has turned on timing. Los Angeles County argued that the allegations targeted by its dismissal motion were barred by the statute of limitations and contended Pewitt could not produce substantial evidence of a harassing act within the applicable window, per the county's court papers. Under California's Assembly Bill 9, effective January 1, 2020, the statute of limitations for filing workplace discrimination, harassment or retaliation complaints under the Fair Employment and Housing Act was expanded from one year to three years, according to law firm Orrick.
Pewitt's legal team leaned on what's known as the continuing violation doctrine, which allows courts to weigh older, otherwise time-barred incidents if a plaintiff shows those acts were part of an ongoing pattern extending into the statutory window, per an explainer from Kent | Pincin. That legal theory appears to be what allowed Duffy-Lewis to let two of Pewitt's harassment claims survive the county's challenge despite the older incidents cited in her filings.
Reassignment and Health Claims Also in Dispute
Pewitt has pointed to her April 2016 reassignment to the Public Assistance Crimes Enforcement Unit as an adverse employment action, noting she had more seniority than the sergeants typically assigned there, since the unit was reserved for entry-level and newly promoted sergeants. County attorneys countered that a Hispanic male coworker was treated the same way, according to court papers cited by the same outlet. Pewitt has also testified in a deposition that she suffered heart palpitations due to consistent aggression at work, though county pleadings state she could not describe when the symptoms started or ended or what care she sought.
Pewitt's filings also allege racial bias within the bureau, claiming white male supervisors made statements such as “We're going to take this bureau back” while disfavoring Black female employees in unit transfers and candidate selection. She has said management showed indifference when Black personnel raised concerns about unit assignments, and that she was sometimes discouraged by command staff from reporting equity-related incidents in the first place, describing a code of silence around such complaints.
Part of a Broader Pattern at the DA's Office
Pewitt's case is not the only costly employment dispute to hit county prosecutorial leadership in recent years. In March 2023, a jury awarded a senior prosecutor $1.5 million in a retaliation verdict against current District Attorney George Gascón's office, according to the Shirazi Law Firm. Los Angeles County also accounted for 3,847 of California's 12,459 workplace discrimination and harassment complaints in 2024 — about 31 percent of the statewide total — with retaliation involved in a quarter of all state filings, per Civil Rights Department data compiled by the Law Offices of Todd M. Friedman.
The Bureau of Investigation itself carries significant institutional weight: established in 1913 as California's first district attorney investigative unit, it employs sworn peace officers with full arrest powers who assist prosecutors and conduct original investigations into public corruption, complex fraud and organized crime, according to The Appeal. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office overall is the largest local prosecutorial agency in the country, covering a 4,084-square-mile jurisdiction and serving more than 10 million residents.
Over the course of the litigation, Pewitt has said she provided input on lawsuits brought by other office employees and by defendants in criminal cases, and she participated in administrative hearings tied to her own claims. She sought legal advice in 2020 before filing suit. With the September 14 trial date now set, a jury will decide whether the two surviving harassment and hostile work environment claims hold up — a far narrower fight than the sweeping discrimination and retaliation case Pewitt first brought against the county, Lacey and a dozen supervisors six years ago.
