A former UCLA employee recently filed a complaint against a professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, allegingshe was fired because she is black.
Dawn Therese Evans, who worked in the school of public health for more than three decades, is suing her supervisor Dr. Niklas Krause, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit was filed in May in the Los Angeles County Superior Court of California against Krause and the University of California Board of Regents.
Evans, who is black, was one of three employees in the Education and Research Center in the school of public health who came from a racial minority background, according to court documents.
The lawsuit claims Krause became her supervisor in January 2011 and fired all three of these employees within one year.
Krause and Evans often disagreed over policies in their department, according to the court documents.
When Krause, the administrator of the Education and Research Center at the public health school, asked Evans to transfer money from a student stipend account to the Education and Research Center director’s discretionary account, Evans refused and claimed the transaction would violate a federal funding policy, said Evans’ attorney Edwin Pairavi.
After the incident, Krause allegedly slowly began to take away Evans’ responsibilities and eventually fired her, Pairavi said.
According to the complaint document, Krause reassigned work to Evans that was originally assigned to a white employee. When Evans complained of feeling overwhelmed from the new responsibilities, Krause allegedly said, “too bad, figure it out, get it done,” rather than accommodating her request as he had done for the other employee, the lawsuit claimed.
“(Krause) made comments like ‘useless’ to describe his African American and Latino employees,” Pairavisaid.
In an email statement, UCLA spokesman Steve Ritea said the university was unable to comment on pending litigation.
Krause could not be reached for comment after multiple attempts through phone and email.
Evans is requesting over $25,000 in compensation for the way she was treated, according to a court document.
The court hearing for the case is set to take place in June.
Compiled by Yael Levin, Bruin senior staff.
I have been discrimination from my supervisor at work and co workers , i am the one only suffer no one else and the supervisor plus the co workers still working.
The department and the HR does not care about it, they just want run the work nothing else .