A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has rejected former Long Beach police officer Alma Magana's last bid to revive her sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against the city, ruling this week that mutual social media follows and post likes are no proof of harassment on their own. Judge Jerrold Abeles's Wednesday decision denied Magana's motions for a new trial or judgment notwithstanding the verdict, closing out a case that had already ended in a jury loss for the department veteran fired in October 2022.
The jury's May 13 verdict found Long Beach not liable for alleged sexual harassment and concluded Magana's complaints were not a substantial factor in her firing, according to MyNewsLA. Magana had also argued that Abeles made legal errors that hurt her case before the jury, but his Wednesday ruling rejected those arguments as well.
Magana's career with the department spanned more than a decade before her firing. She began as a police explorer in 2010, was hired as a police services specialist in March 2014, and became a sworn officer in April 2015 after completing academy training, according to the Signal Tribune.
Harassment Allegations That Sparked the Suit
Magana originally filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court in November 2023, naming the City of Long Beach along with then-Sgt. Jason Lehman and Lt. Robert Titus as co-defendants and alleging sex discrimination, retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, according to the Long Beach Post. She contended she was ultimately terminated for complaining about the sergeant's intrusions into her personal life.
According to the lawsuit, Lehman repeatedly tried to reach Magana through her personal phone, met her at random locations to discuss private topics, and pressed her about who she was dating, at one point telling her to step it up at work. Magana said she declined his advances and eventually blocked him across all of her social media accounts because of what she described as persistent harassing behavior.
She said the sergeant's conduct made her hate coming to work, and in November 2020 she filed a complaint about him with her supervising lieutenant, Titus, who she alleged failed to investigate or intervene. Magana said the department responded by reassigning her to traffic duty and other less desirable assignments, and she maintained that two subsequent internal affairs investigations into her were retaliatory rather than legitimate discipline.
The Excluded 'Me-Too' Witness
Magana's attorneys wanted the jury to hear from Danielle Cortez, an LBPD job applicant who, according to court papers, said Lehman asked for her personal cellphone number, sent her heart and fire emojis, offered to help her prepare for her job interview, and eventually asked her out on a date. The same court papers state Cortez was also contacted by Lehman through social media, and Magana's team argued the pattern echoed her own claim that the sergeant had contacted her by both phone and social media.
Abeles disagreed, ruling that Cortez's interactions with Lehman were not legally comparable because he lacked the formal supervisory authority over a job applicant that he held over Magana as a subordinate officer. The judge called the similarities between the two women's experiences "at best generic," writing that mutual social media follows and liked posts are "as ubiquitous as wearing blue jeans and eating pizza" and therefore not proof of harassment on their own.
California courts have long allowed so-called "me-too" testimony from other workers alleging harassment by the same supervisor, under a 2011 appellate ruling in Pantoja v. Anton that permits such evidence to show discriminatory intent, according to Littler Mendelson. Trial judges still retain discretion to decide whether the situations are legally comparable, which is what tripped up Cortez's testimony here. Separately, California Evidence Code Section 1106 generally bars defense attorneys from introducing a plaintiff's own off-duty sexual conduct to argue consent or downplay emotional injury in harassment cases, per Consumer Attorneys of California.
Internal Affairs Findings and a Contested Firing
Magana traced her troubles to a November 2020 off-duty outing in Mission Viejo, where she was with her then-boyfriend and a third person identified only as "Ish." She maintained she was covertly drugged during the outing, and diphenhydramine was later found in her system, according to the lawsuit. She was arrested after an argument with her boyfriend and detained by the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the suit states.
Long Beach police investigated Magana's conduct during that outing, and in June 2022 the department's Internal Affairs division sustained four of the five misconduct allegations against her, including insubordination for refusing to take a breathalyzer test, per the same account. The department reached the opposite conclusion after a separate off-duty incident in Palm Springs in September 2021, finding in Magana's favor. She was fired in October 2022 as she was returning from vacation, and she has maintained both internal affairs probes were retaliation for her complaints about Lehman rather than legitimate discipline.
The Officers Named in the Case
Lehman is no longer with the department. He served 16 years with the Long Beach Police Department before retiring in January 2022, after which he founded "Why'd You Stop Me?", a nonprofit that provides community-policing and de-escalation training to law enforcement, according to Voyage LA.
Titus, meanwhile, was promoted to lieutenant in June 2020 by then-Police Chief Robert Luna after years working as a detective and sergeant, according to the City of Long Beach. In September 2024, Magana's attorneys filed pretrial motions seeking internal discipline records for both Lehman and Titus, arguing department supervisors were aware of prior misconduct allegations, according to KFI AM 640. City attorneys countered that Long Beach held immunity and denied all claims of supervisor liability.
