A Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who has spent more than three decades in the office says she has been passed over for promotion eight more times since she sued the county in 2021 over alleged retaliation, and now she wants a judge to decide whether those newer denials belong in her case. Linda Baek's attorney has filed papers with Judge Jeffery D. McFarland asking the court to resolve a dispute over how far back — and how far forward — evidence in her lawsuit can reach.
Baek was hired by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office in April 1995 and, according to MyNewsLA.com, received favorable assignments and steady promotions until 2014. She now seeks elevation from grade 3 prosecutor to grade 4, a jump that, per salary data compiled by Bandana, would move her beyond the roughly $140,697 annual pay tied to her current Deputy District Attorney III title and into a grade tied to senior supervisory or complex trial duties.
The account of what changed in 2014 centers on Bob Knapp, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer who was then working as a juvenile case hearing officer in the DA's Long Beach branch. The station's report states that Baek complained to a supervisor about Knapp's alleged conduct, which she says included groping her bra strap after putting his hand on her back and telling her, “I love you, Linda.” Baek says she threw Knapp out of her office, but that her supervisor minimized her claims and did nothing in response.
A Lawsuit, a Dismissal, and an Appellate Reversal
Baek filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court in May 2021, after first obtaining a right-to-sue notice in April of that year from the state agency now known as the Civil Rights Department — renamed from the Department of Fair Employment and Housing under state legislation effective June 30, 2022, according to case records reviewed by CaseMine. She alleged that a coordinated pattern of continuing violations began after she reported the 2014 harassment, and she submitted a sworn declaration stating she has never received the feedback or coaching that other deputy district attorneys typically get when a requested grade promotion is denied.
Trial judge Douglas W. Stern granted summary judgment against Baek in December 2023, dismissing her retaliation claims. The California Court of Appeal's Second Appellate District reversed that ruling in February 2025, finding that triable issues of material fact existed as to whether the county retaliated against her by failing to promote her, according to the case record on CaseMine. That reversal sent the case back to Superior Court, where it now sits before Judge McFarland for pretrial discovery.
In September 2023 filings, Baek had voluntarily dismissed four of her original six causes of action — including gender discrimination, disability discrimination, and family leave retaliation claims — narrowing the suit to FEHA retaliation and failure to prevent retaliation, per the same case record. The county had originally argued that any actions predating 2020 were time-barred, an argument that no longer controls the case's scope now that it is back in the trial court.
Fighting Over What Counts as Evidence
The current fight is narrower but consequential: Baek contends that the eight additional promotion denials she says she has suffered since filing her 2021 lawsuit are part of the same ongoing retaliatory pattern and should be part of pretrial discovery. Los Angeles County, however, has taken the position that only missed promotions between January 1, 2019, and the date she filed suit are relevant to the case, according to MyNewsLA.com. Baek's attorney argues the court's input is needed to settle the parties' competing positions before discovery can move forward.
Baek alleges that human resource departments at both the county and the District Attorney's Office have continued a pattern of retaliation against her, and she has said she was hopeful for positive change after George Gascón, the district attorney of Los Angeles County, was elected. Jackie Lacey, who served in the same five-lawyer hate crimes unit as Baek before becoming district attorney herself, is also referenced in the case record as part of Baek's decades-long tenure in the office.
The county's defense points to an internal review that reached different conclusions. An investigation completed in October 2022 by the Los Angeles County Equity Investigations Unit interviewed 15 witnesses about Baek's harassment and retaliation complaints; per the CaseMine record, all but one of those witnesses failed to support her allegations, and the investigative report noted that supervisors denied her claims. That finding sits in direct tension with Baek's own account of a persistent freeze on her promotions, and the dossier record does not resolve which version prevails — that dispute is now for the trial court to sort out.
A Pattern Echoing Elsewhere in the DA's Office
Baek is represented by attorney Bryan J. Lazarski of Lazarski Law Practice, while the county has retained the outside firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP, with attorneys Ronda Jamgotchian and Paul Berkowitz leading the defense, according to the case record. Decades earlier, in 1999, Baek had coordinated the DA office's Juvenile Offenders Learning Tolerance program, a $450,000 federally funded initiative run with the Museum of Tolerance to curb juvenile hate crimes, according to a 1999 Los Angeles Times report — a marker of the specialized assignments she held before her promotions stalled.
Baek's case is not the only one testing the culture inside LA County's DA leadership. Six-year fight sends DA harassment suit to trial describes a separate case in which a judge allowed hostile work environment claims from Bureau of Investigation Sgt. Karen Pewitt to proceed to trial, alleging systemic suppression of complaints across multiple administrations, including under former DA Jackie Lacey. Together, the cases suggest retaliation and harassment allegations against county DA management have surfaced across divisions and administrations rather than in a single office or era.
