PHOENIX — A federal judge denied the state Senate’s attempt to overturn a $2.75 million discrimination award against it, leaving Katie Hobbs and other Democrats scrambling to blunt the effects of the verdict on her gubernatorial ambitions.
Judge Douglas Rayes rejected Senate arguments that Talonya Adams presented no credible evidence that she ever complained to Hobbs and others in 2015 about disparate pay on the basis of race or sex. Hobbs, who is now secretary of state, was Democratic Senate minority leader at the time that Adams, a Democratic staffer for the Senate, was fired.
Rayes, in a brief order Tuesday, said there was sufficient evidence for a jury to accept Adams’ arguments about the complaints she made.
He said that precludes him from second-guessing jurors’ decision last week that Adams, a Black woman, was a victim of discrimination and that her firing was retaliation for complaining. A separate jury in an earlier trial had also found Adams was discriminated against.
Hobbs, engaged in what is now a three-way race for the Democratic nomination for governor, has refused to speak with reporters about the new verdict.
Instead, she had her campaign publicist Jennah Rivera put out a statement denying that Adams was the victim of discrimination. Instead, Rivera said the pay differentialwas simply due to the fact that Republicans who control the chamber pay their staffers more than Democratic employees.
Rivera, seeking to put some distance between Hobbs and the firing, also said Adams was dismissed not by Hobbs but by Wendy Baldo, who was the Republican chief of staff in the Senate at the time.
But records from the two separate trials, one in 2019 and the one that concluded last week, paint a different picture.
Potentially more damaging to Hobbs’ political future is that key members of the African-American community are lashing out at not just what happened in 2015 but what some see as Hobbs’ failure now, even after the two verdicts, to acknowledge any culpability. The closest Hobbs has come to acknowledging culpability was during the recent trial, when she said she wished she had “been a better ally’’ to Adams at the time.
“The fact of the matter is, we don’t trust Katie Hobbs,’’ Cloves Campbell told Capitol Media Services on Tuesday. He is a former lawmaker, the publisher of the Arizona Informant newspaper, and was one of six African-American leaders who put out a statement following the second verdict.
He said she has failed to take responsibility.
“If she can do that kind of stuff while she’s in the Legislature, if she can sit there and lie as secretary of state, what can we expect from her as governor?” he asked. In his view, the “lie” is her failure to acknowledge that Adams was discriminated against, he said.
Sandra Kennedy, a former legislator and current Democratic member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, said she believes Hobbs’ actions make her unacceptable.
“We want someone who is going to represent us, and not just us but people of color,” Kennedy, who is Black, told Capitol Media Services. “And if she’s not going to stand up for people of color, or an African-American female who says, ‘Hey, I’m not in the type of salary that everybody else is getting,’ and then you fire them, that speaks in volumes about character,’’ she said.
With Hobbs not talking, that has left it to her political allies to put out statements echoing her own explanation that the fact Adams was paid less than others was strictly a partisan issue because the Republicans who control the Senate pay their own staffers more.
“We all serve the people of Arizona and our staff deserve more equitable pay policies,’’ said Sen. Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix, the current Senate minority leader.
Rep. Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, Rios’ counterpart in the House, thanked Adams “for bringing out for all to see the pay inequities between Democratic and Republican legislative staff.’’
There is evidence that Adams, who was being paid $60,000, was getting nearly $30,000 less than a staffer who advised Senate Republicans on some of the same policy issues. But she wasn’t fired until, after learning about the disparity, she complained to not just her immediate supervisors but to others.
None of that, however, counters the findings of the jury in the first trial that Adams proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the Senate “discriminated against her with respect to her pay, and both race and sex were a contributing factor.’’
The only reason for a second trial was that Judge Rayes said Adams, who represented herself, had failed to submit evidence that she was retaliated against for complaining about her salary.
The second jury decided the retaliation claim in Adams’ favor and said she should be awarded $2.75 million.
There are other issues.
Hobbs said it was Baldo who fired Adams. But at trial, Hobbs testified that the decision to terminate Adams was a “group decision’’ which also included Baldo and senior Democratic staffers.
Hobbs also said she had “lost trust’’ in Adams, at least in part because Adams had left to care for her son who had a medical emergency in Seattle. But there was evidence at trial that Adams had told her direct supervisor about the trip and he did not object.
As to claims by Hobbs’ Democratic allies that this is all about partisan pay differentials, the records don’t back that up.
A 2015 analysis report on legislative staff salaries published by Legislative Report, a division of Arizona Capitol Times, did find that Adams was paid less than every Senate GOP staffer. But it also shows that four of the five Democratic staffers all also were paid more than she was.
There’s also the fact that when the judge ordered Adams to be rehired in 2019, she was given a salary of $113,900. She remains a Senate staffer.
And finally there are the instructions that Rayes gave to the second jury before deliberation.
He told them the only way they could find that Adams was the victim of illegal retaliation was if they believe she was fired because she opposed “an unlawful employment practice’’ and complained about it. And while race and sex discrimination are unlawful, political discrimination is not.
The question now is about the political damage to Hobbs.
Both Marco Lopez and Aaron Lieberman, her rivals for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, wasted no time after the second trial in saying the verdict raises questions about Hobbs’ ability to lead.
That doesn’t necessarily mean either will get the backing of the African-American community leaders, who may be looking for someone else. “There’s still time to bring somebody,’’ Campbell said. “But she’s not the answer for us.’’
The winner of the 2022 Democratic primary election for governor will go on to face a GOP candidate in the general election. Republicans running include Steve Gaynor, Kari Lake, Matt Salmon, Karrin Taylor Robson and Kimberly Yee.
