Late last month, U.S. District Judge Richard
Mills dismissed a counterclaim filed by the city of Springfield
against Sarah Gripper, a former public-works employee who’s
suing the city for racial discrimination.
The city’s countersuit alleged that
Gripper, who is African-American, defamed and held the city in a
false light when Gripper claimed in her lawsuit that the city
exhibited toward her “patterns, practices, and policies of
racial discrimination.”
Mills tossed the countersuit on the basis of
several precedents, including City of
Chicago v. Tribune Company, wherein
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution “does not
tolerate any form of libel on government.”
But the city sees the Gripper case
differently. According to Springfield corporation counsel Jenifer
Johnson, the governmental landscape has changed considerably since
1923, when the Tribune ruling was handed down.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense
not to let a government make a defamation or false-light
suit,” Johnson says. This is a case, she says, in which the
city was acting as an employer, not as a policy-maker. Johnson
therefore believes that the city should have the same right as any
other employer to protect itself from lawsuits such as
Gripper’s, which she calls “frivolous” and
“meritless in so many ways.”
Gripper had worked for the Department of
Public Works for eight years before being let go in September 2003,
when she was told that the grant that paid her salary was no longer
available. She didn’t buy the explanation. Gripper claims
that several white co-workers kept their jobs, which were also
grant-funded, or placed in other positions within city government.
In the months before her dismissal, Gripper
reported to higher-ups — her boss, human resources, and City
Water, Light & Power head Todd Renfrow — that a co-worker
had called her a “stupid black bitch” on at least two
occasions. Gripper believes that these complaints were the real
reason for her dismissal, so she sued the city.
When he learned that the city planned to sue
Gripper for defamation, her attorney, Courtney Cox, was taken
aback.
“It was remarkable,” Cox says.
“It says a lot about this particular administration.”
A check with the clerk’s office of the U.S.
District Court, Central District of Illinois, reveals at least 39
lawsuits filed against the city — not including the police
department — since 1988. Johnson says that this is the first time
since she started as corporation counsel in 2003 that the city has sued
for defamation.
Next Gripper and her attorney will prepare
for trial. They’ve asked for a list of city employees, the
race of each employee, and other information, all of which, Cox
says, the city has been slow to provide.
Johnson says that her office is “still
discussing” whether to appeal Mills’ ruling.
This article appears in Jul 7-13, 2005.
