Thread by @AkivaMCohen

I want to spend some time taking you through what looks like a case with actual merit - a discrimination case against the USDOJ. Full disclosure: the plaintiff is a friend of mine - a former mentee, a deeply good human being, and an excellent lawyer.

In other words, while I don't have personal knowledge of anything alleged here, if Shamiso is saying something happened, I believe it. And after you look at the DOJ's answer, I'm guessing you will too.

Here's the basic story: Shamiso got pregnant and had a child who, for medical reasons, needed to have breast milk. That sometimes meant that when Shamiso travelled for work, so did the baby. Her supervisor did not like any of that, and fired her for it.

And away we go

A perfectly written intro. Gives an overview of the basic story and the legal issues the complaint will be covering.

Skipping some boilerplate, we get to Shamiso's background. Not sure I'd have listed the Super Lawyers thing in a complaint (though hey, it's on my own bio page, so maybe I would've).

In their answer, the DOJ admits Paragraph 13

This will be important; a huge chunk of their defense is going to be that the white collar litigator with 10 years of experience they specifically sought out and actively recruited just wasn't good enough at her job.

Knowing Shamiso, btw, that's some bullshit.

I'm going to skip the part of the complaint covering the laws and policies against the discrimination Shamiso faced; it's well laid out but you don't need specifics on "the DOJ is not supposed to discriminate," do you?

Any time you see something like this in a discrimination complaint, you know you're meeting the chief villain in the Plaintiff's story. So ... what did Ms. Annalou do?

WTF is this shit?

Does it get worse? It does.

That said, I would have broken each of these paragraphs up into separate one-sentence paragraphs and gone into more detail on the leave bank policy - force the DOJ to admit or deny specific things!

As a NICU parent myself, I know this life

Who can see where this is going, btw?

Reader: They would not.

Well, this isn't allowable (note: the DOJ denies these paragraphs, and it's going to be a very simple factual matter, provable with discovery, to see who's telling the truth)

Again, Ms. Tirol seems like a real winner

Again, this reads like a how-not-to manual for HR; you can't be denying people assignments based on their status as parents.

Note: DOJ admits they assigned her to only 1 week of a 2-week trial. That's unusual, in my experience

OK, now's where things get super hairy for the DOJ. This is NOT the type of email you want.

And DOJ, the "they weren't being snide, they were sincere" defense isn't going to fly given the Deputy Section Chief's "WTF" response

I mean, the "get this" email could, in a vacuum, have meant "Hey, isn't this cool? Look at the initiative she's taking, I'm really happy with it"

But when your deputy responds "What the Fuck" that says a couple of things

1) *He* read it as a complaint, not praise
2) That supports the Plaintiff's claim that Tirol had a negative attitude towards pregnancy/baby issues - that history's why he would read it as a negative
3) You didn't respond "no, it's a good thing!" b/c you didn't think it was good

And then follow that up with some disparate treatment. Not good.

Also, "denies except sure, she received *some* praise" ... that's not a good look, DOJ

The complaint then goes through Shamiso's accomplishments while at the DOJ, which are impressive (and which the DOJ tries to deny but mainly confirms; "Denies except admits the basic facts" is, again, not a good look)

Now we get to the meat of it, and to the DOJ's (IMO) absolutely bonkers "yeah, she complained, but she didn't complain about discrimination" defense to her retaliation claim

I mean ... you're going to admit she challenged the rating, admit she brought up a white male comparator as part of challenging the rating, admit that the Section Chief shot back "do you really want to do that" ... and you're going to argue "she wasn't claiming discrimination"??

I mean, it's a strategy, I guess. But y'all tell me: is it persuading you? Because to me, it flies like a lead balloon

Also ... that "do you really want to do this" bullshit is the other reason I'm walking through this one, aside from the fact that this is a friend.

You know how many people opt not to "make waves" because speaking up about discrimination leads to backlash?

It has to stop.

DOJ denies Tirol said this. But it fits what we know and what they've admitted. And there's zero chance Shamiso is just making up a quote.

Let's talk about this denial in Paragraph 59. Y'all, she *flew* to New Jersey.

With her infant in her lap.

Her plane ticket, the one DOJ's travel people booked, says "lap infant" on it. So yeah ... DOJ arranged the baby's travel

Gotta take a break to go deal with my shabbos cooking. I'll be back

Back. Apparently Paragraph 59 went missing, so we'll pick up there.

Note: if I understand correctly, that second sentence of Par. 60 - which the DOJ denied - came from the DOJ response to Shamiso's EEOC complaint

"Admits that an attorney on the trial team so stated" is weasel words for "yeah, that's what they said, but we don't believe them" and I am just DYING to find out how a sleepy baby IN ANOTHER ROOM could have distracted the trial team

Basically, they jumped on this as an excuse to fire her

And oh, btw, that's crystal fucking clear. You don't fire someone two weeks after you rate them "satisfactory" unless you were just looking for an excuse

BTW, I have literally brought a toddler to oral argument with me; babysitter was sick, wife couldn't call out, we had no other choice. Court staff was exceptionally accommodating and a partner of mine eventually showed up to watch him while I argued. It happens. It's not firable!

This ... is REALLY not the timing you want if you're going to say you're firing someone for poor performance

This is also a really fucking stupid denial. You (DOJ) don't know if she was celebrating with colleagues when she got the notice. Why not DKI it?

And there's probably a record of what Judge Chutkan said. Why deny it instead of DKI? (Deny knowledge or information - i.e. "we don't know whether this is true or not")

Since it's clear that they didn't decide to fire her until after the performance review, they're leaning really hard into "she complained, but not about discrimination"

So, this is a bit double edged. Yes, it's pretty slam dunk evidence that they intended to keep Shamiso. But if all of her comparators got the same rating, it's going to be hard to show that the rating itself was "too low" because of discrimination.

And yet, the DOJ denied Paragraph 74 (they intended to keep me until I complained about discrimination).

This case will therefore rise or fall on whether Shamiso's complaints were about discrimination

Putting a ribbon around this section, quite nicely. And the DOJ again "denies, except admits the things she alleged" (except they claim they've provided an explanation)

This appears to be a pervasive problem. That said, I don't know why this is pled "upon information and belief" - either other people have told you this (in which case you can just allege it) or they haven't and you can't plead it at all. I guess there's an element of "maybe they

were lying about what they told me and don't really believe it" - but this is something that I would personally just plead if I was aware of these things because I've been told them.

At worst, I'd plead "other attorneys have expressed to Plaintiff that ..." and then

follow up with "upon information and belief, what they said was true"

If I'm counsel for DOJ, I really really don't like these paragraphs, but ...

This is absolutely fucking not how I'd deal with them. As @Whey_standard said, why, why would you put this in when you didn't need to?

Also, I don't know what was in people's hearts. But I know that if my new boss said "we've never hired anyone like you" &then followed up by clarifying "wait, we do have another orthodox Jew" I'd be reading antisemitism into most interactions moving forward if there was any doubt

Also, this type of stuff is why employers HAAAATE reference requests.

Again, this case will turn on whether her complaint was of discrimination. If it was expressly so, DOJ is toast on the retaliation claim.

Retaliation on a silver platter

The rest of this is just repeating the allegations and saying "so I have discrimination claims"

That's it. That's the story. And AT BEST for DOJ, it's got a lot of very shady behavior that somehow isn't discriminatory and a lot of cleaning up to do.

Get em, Shamiso.