A former district director for California Assemblymember Anamarie Ávila Farías has filed a lawsuit accusing the Concord Democrat and the state Assembly of whistleblower retaliation, racial discrimination and harassment, alleging she was stripped of her duties and effectively pushed out of her job after reporting that a colleague was doing campaign work on the taxpayer’s dime. Pa’tanisha Davis Pierson’s complaint, filed Oct. 21 in Contra Costa County Superior Court, names both Ávila Farías and the California State Assembly as defendants and lays out nine separate causes of action.
Davis Pierson began working as district director in Ávila Farías’s Concord office in January 2025, according to CalMatters. The trouble, per her complaint obtained by contracosta.news, began on or about September 29, 2025, when she reported to Assembly Human Resources that staff member Jessica Cisneros had been performing campaign work for Ávila Farías during state-paid hours and from inside the taxpayer-funded district office.
Within weeks of that report, the complaint alleges, Davis Pierson was isolated from staff, stripped of supervisory authority, subjected to heightened scrutiny, and prevented from carrying out her core district director functions. The filing states the Assembly also altered her previously approved Wednesday work schedule and failed to provide hybrid-work and lifting-restriction accommodations she had requested. On October 27, 2025, the complaint alleges, Ávila Farías told staff and interns that Davis Pierson was no longer their supervisor and instructed them not to communicate with her.
Claims of Discriminatory Treatment Toward Black Staff
The lawsuit also alleges a broader pattern of mistreatment toward Black employees in the office. According to the complaint, Black employees were assigned less desirable and more time-consuming work than their non-Black colleagues, Black interns received less recognition, and Black employees were yelled at or pressured out of their positions.
The complaint further alleges two specific physical incidents. On November 13, 2025, staff member Jessica Cisneros is accused of intentionally making offensive physical contact with Davis Pierson by body-checking her in a district-office hallway. The New York Post, which also reviewed the filing, reported that Cisneros remains employed by Ávila Farías. Then on January 5, 2026, according to the complaint, Ávila Farías subjected Davis Pierson to unwanted physical contact by forcing her into a hug despite the ongoing workplace conflict between them.
Resignation and Assembly Investigation
Davis Pierson submitted her resignation on April 9, 2026, effective May 1, 2026, describing the circumstances as a constructive termination brought on by discrimination, retaliation and hostile working conditions. Separately, the Assembly’s Workplace Conduct Unit opened an investigation into her allegations on Nov. 3, 2025, per the same CalMatters report. Her complaint seeks compensatory damages, including past and future lost wages and benefits, along with emotional-distress, equitable, attorney-fee, statutory and punitive damages against Ávila Farías where authorized.
Ávila Farías has denied the allegations. In an emailed statement to CalMatters, she said, “I vigorously deny the allegations and will defend against them through the appropriate legal process.” She also defended her hiring practices, saying her staff is among the Legislature’s most diverse and reflects the communities of Contra Costa County. Davis Pierson’s attorneys declined to comment, saying the filing speaks for itself.
A Familiar Pattern at the State Capitol
Workplace misconduct complaints are not new to the California Legislature. In 2017, nearly 200 women signed a letter detailing pervasive harassment issues at the Capitol, prompting lawmakers to create the Workplace Conduct Unit described on its own official process page as an independent division of the Office of Legislative Counsel tasked with investigating discrimination, harassment and retaliation claims. The unit received 145 complaints in 2023, down from 161 in 2022 and 171 in 2019, and of the 646 complaints received since February 2019, 96% have been resolved, according to CalMatters’ reporting on the unit’s track record. As of December 2022, 91 of those cases had been substantiated, with 86 resulting in disciplinary action, including nine dismissals.
Former Assembly staffer Ruth Ferguson wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that after she reported alleged harassment in Assemblymember Marc Berman’s district office in 2019, she waited more than a year before anyone from the Assembly or the Workplace Conduct Unit contacted her, though the unit eventually opened a formal investigation. The Legislature’s own records law does not require release of misconduct reports, limiting public visibility into how such complaints are ultimately resolved.
Ávila Farías, a freshman Democrat who took office in December 2024 representing a heavily Democratic East Bay district, is seeking reelection on Nov. 3. Davis Pierson now works as an administrative law judge, according to her attorney.
