MASON — A former Ingham County Health Department employee is claiming in a federal lawsuit that her supervisors described her using racial slurs, including calling her “Aunt Jemima,” and that her complaints to elected officials were not heeded.
Krystal Davis-Dunn, who also claims she was not provided disability accommodations, filed a federal lawsuit against Ingham County Jan. 5 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan seeking attorney fees, costs and punitive damages of an unspecified amount. She is also pursuing a Circuit Court lawsuit in Ingham County that alleges sexual harassment by a supervisor, a claim that is not part of the federal suit.
The federal lawsuit alleges supervisors called Davis-Dunn “‘Aunt Jemima’ because Plaintiff is a black woman and wore head wraps to work” and she was “also frequently accused of being ‘intimidating’ and ‘aggressive’ simply because she is a tall black woman.”
Davis-Dunn’s attorney, Zach Runyan, initially agreed to an interview with himself or Davis-Dunn, but did not respond to subsequent messages.
Gregg Todd, the county’s controller and administrator, said Davis-Dunn worked for the county from 2016 to early 2022 as a community health worker with the Maternal Child Health Division and from then until February 2023 as a behavioral health consultant with Forest Community Health Center.
He declined to comment on the allegations in the legal cases.
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The county has not filed a response to the federal lawsuit, but in an April 2023 response to the county lawsuit, attorneys said Davis-Dunn did not report any sexual harassment to county officials or to her union representatives and called Davis-Dunn’s harassment allegations “untrue.”
Davis-Dunn, who went to graduate school at Michigan State University, said in the lawsuit that she reported in a 2020 letter to the county’s Board of Commissioners several examples of “pervasive racial discrimination, racial harassment and retaliation” within the health department. The lawsuit says the response to her letter was dismissive.
The complaint alleges the county did not accommodate her neurodevelopment disability, which can make it difficult to process certain audio and visual information. The lawsuit said Davis-Dunn needed to use her computer’s built-in microphone to help her dictate instead of typing, but the microphone and loud workspace left her transcripts incoherent.
Davis-Dunn said she submitted at least 10 requests for accommodations, but the county failed to provide any assistance.
The county’s Ingham County lawsuit response acknowledges Davis-Dunn requested accommodations, but says she was provided with a “state of the art” computer loaded with special software and she “failed and refused to complete the requisite ADA accommodations forms.”
The county said Davis-Dunn was not denied promotions based on race because she was hired for an internal position as a behavioral health consultant.
Davis-Dunn’s lawsuit says she filed three complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission/Michigan Department of Civil Rights alleging employment discrimination and subsequent retaliation for the initial complaint.
Vicki Levengood, a spokesperson for the state civil rights department, said in an email that three complaints were automatically closed in 2023 when Davis-Dunn filed a lawsuit, which is a state policy. The three complaints were filed in September 2021, May 2022 and March 2023.
The State Journal filed an open records request to obtain those complaints, along with any findings from state officials or responses from the county to the complaints.
The department asked for an extension for some records, but provided others, including one full case, which does show a dismissal in May due to a lawsuit being filed. The civil rights allegations in those documents mirror the county lawsuit allegations.
Contact Mike Ellis at [email protected] or 517-267-0415