A San Francisco Superior Court jury has rejected former district attorney's office employee Twanda Bailey's claims that she was racially harassed and then retaliated against for complaining about it, closing out a legal battle that stretched over a decade and once reached the California Supreme Court. Jurors voted 10-2 against Bailey's harassment claim and 12-0 against her retaliation claim, deliberating for only about two hours after a two-week trial.
The case traces back to January 2015, when Bailey, who had worked for the district attorney's office as an investigative assistant since 2001 under then-District Attorney George Gascón, says a coworker called her the N-word and that a supervisor insulted her when she complained, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Bailey alleged the incident occurred on Jan. 22, 2015, after a coworker identified as Saras Larkin told her she had seen a mouse run under her desk, according to an account from Liebert Cassidy Whitmore. Larkin denied using the slur when questioned by supervisors and disputed Bailey's allegation throughout the case, the Chronicle reports, while her supervisor, Evette Taylor-Monachino, also disputed Bailey's account of what happened afterward.
A Complaint That Went Nowhere
Bailey says Taylor-Monachino refused to file her complaint or separate her from Larkin, telling her that doing so would create an appearance of wrongdoing, and allegedly warned Bailey, “You are going to get it.” The San Francisco Department of Human Resources ultimately declined to investigate, concluding in July 2015 that a single comment was insufficient to create an abusive working environment, per the California Supreme Court opinion reproduced by Legal Aid at Work.
By December 2015, Bailey's psychiatrist recommended she take a six-week leave of absence for the stress stemming from the workplace conflict, according to the opinion document. She filed suit against the city on Dec. 30, 2015, alleging racial discrimination, racial harassment, retaliation and failure to prevent discrimination. Her attorney, Daniel Bacon, has said the incident caused Bailey to suffer a nervous breakdown that ended her career, the Chronicle reports.
Lower Courts Dismiss, Then the State's Top Court Steps In
Lower courts initially dismissed Bailey's suit, concluding that one racial slur was insufficient to support workplace harassment or discrimination claims. That changed in July 2024, when the California Supreme Court issued a unanimous 7-0 ruling reinstating her case, holding that a single sufficiently severe incident of racial harassment can support an employee's lawsuit. Justice Kelli Evans wrote that “the N-word carries with it, not just the stab of present insult, but the stinging barbs of history, which catch and tear at the psyche the way thorns tear at the skin.”
The ruling marked a significant moment for California employment law. According to Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, the justices held that an isolated act of harassment may be actionable if it is sufficiently severe under the totality of the circumstances, and that a coworker's influence or the nature of workplace relationships can still create an abusive environment even when that coworker holds no supervisory authority. The decision came against a backdrop in which California civil-service workers filed roughly 300 to 400 racial-discrimination complaints annually between 2020 and 2022, according to state Human Resources Department figures cited by CalMatters.
Trial Ends in Defeat for Bailey
Despite the Supreme Court's reinstatement of her case, the trial that followed two years later ended in defeat. Bacon said the jury majority did not follow the California Supreme Court's instructions and instead believed a single use of the N-word was not harassment. “Justice did not prevail,” Bacon said, according to the Chronicle's report. He identified what he described as possible grounds for an appeal of the verdict, though he did not elaborate on them.
City Attorney spokesperson Jen Kwart said in a statement that whether the word was used had always been disputed, and that the jury found the facts did not support Bailey's claims or the relief she sought. The Chronicle's report, authored by staff writer Bob Egelko, notes that a jury verdict against a plaintiff does not necessarily mean jurors concluded she was lying — only that her claims did not meet the legal standard required to prevail. It remains unclear whether Bailey will pursue an appeal of the verdict.
