A $350,000 retaliation lawsuit filed by Kirsten Snowden names Multnomah County and the district attorney’s office as defendants and alleges that former Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt punished her with an unusually low 1% merit raise. Snowden, who backed Schmidt’s challenger in the 2024 election, says that support was a factor in the raise decision. She now serves as first assistant to Schmidt’s successor, Nathan Vasquez.
Snowden filed the suit last week in state court, according to oregonlive.com. The lawsuit names Multnomah County and the district attorney’s office, not Schmidt, as defendants. Snowden now oversees nearly 100 lawyers and 20 investigators as Vasquez’s second-in-command, earning an annual salary of about $285,907, per the same report.
A Campaign That Split the Office
The 2024 race between Schmidt and Vasquez, a longtime prosecutor, shattered fundraising records and divided the district attorney’s office, the outlet reported. Snowden alleges in her lawsuit that her support for Vasquez was a motivating factor in Schmidt’s decision to give her a lower merit increase. The suit also says male supervisory lawyers who backed Schmidt received raises of 2% or 3% that year.
According to the lawsuit, Snowden had previously received consistently positive feedback, and her raise came in lower than those given to other supervisory attorneys. She says she did not receive a performance review that year at all. Snowden filed a complaint with Multnomah County in early 2024 alleging Schmidt fostered a hostile work environment against people whose loyalty he questioned, and separately alleged he violated his own policies for reviewing clemency petitions to then-Gov. Kate Brown.
County Investigator Weighs In
The lawsuit says an outside investigator hired by Multnomah County substantiated Snowden’s retaliation allegations. Snowden also filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries in 2025; according to the lawsuit, the bureau found substantial evidence supporting many of her claims. Her attorney, Dennis Steinman, told the outlet that BOLI’s civil rights division found the district attorney’s office and county equally responsible and that the state found Schmidt violated laws protecting whistleblowers. The lawsuit says Snowden had an ethical and professional obligation to report conduct she reasonably believed violated the law.
Schmidt has pushed back hard. He said the lawsuit is without merit and maintained that complaints against him have come from people who disagreed with his reform-minded approach to the office. He said he reviewed Snowden's complaints himself and found no wrongdoing in his own actions, adding that he looks forward to the facts coming out and the matter being disposed of. Since leaving office, Schmidt has served as general counsel for the Urban League of Portland. Multnomah County declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Not the First Discrimination Claim Against the Office
Snowden’s allegations come amid earlier discrimination and retaliation complaints involving the office during Schmidt’s tenure. Civil rights investigators found the office’s promotion criteria unclear and vague, including a demonstrated willingness to promote the DA’s policy and philosophical direction. Seven of the eight prosecutors Schmidt promoted to the highest rank in his first year were men, and his promotion decision-making team was predominantly male, according to oregonlive.com’s reporting.
A 2023 investigation by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries reported that about 20% of women in the office held leadership positions, compared with 80% of men, despite attorneys overall being split roughly evenly by gender, according to OPB. The bureau also filed an administrative complaint against Schmidt seeking $725,000 in lost wages and damages for prosecutor Amber Kinney, who had raised concerns about discrimination in promotion practices as early as 2021 and later resigned.
What BOLI found in the earlier case
OPB reported that BOLI’s investigation examined six promotions into top positions between August 2020 and January 2022; five went to men, even though most employees eligible for leadership positions were women. In Kinney’s separate complaint, BOLI found substantial evidence of sex/gender discrimination and retaliation connected to her concerns about promotion practices. Kinney resigned in February 2022, and her matter remains pending. Snowden’s case is a separate lawsuit in state court, which also remains pending.
That same year, Multnomah County and the state paid former prosecutor Nicole Harris $125,000 to settle allegations of gender discrimination and retaliation tied to Schmidt's office, according to wweek.com. In 2025, two other female former staffers at the office said they planned to sue over discrimination claims, though those allegations targeted Vasquez's leadership rather than Schmidt's, and Vasquez rejected claims that he or his team discriminated against anyone.
Vasquez has said his focus is on maintaining a professional workplace where employees are respected and concerns can be raised, adding that employees must be able to raise concerns about government operations without fear of retaliation. Snowden's lawsuit against Multnomah County and the district attorney’s office, alleging retaliation by Schmidt, remains pending in state court.
