Leith McLoughlin, a Southampton Village Justice Court clerk, is suing the village in federal court, alleging her then-boss — recently retired Village Justice Barbara Wilson — began discriminating against her when she revealed she was pregnant and then retaliated against her for reporting the behavior.
The complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York reveals that, as a necessary precursor to this lawsuit, McLoughlin filed a charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in July 2020 based on sex and pregnancy discrimination.
On July 13, the EEOC issued its determination: The commission dismissed the charge and stated that it would not investigate further. “This does not mean the claims have no merit,” the determination letter states. The letter also informed McLoughlin of her right to sue the village within 90 days.
According to the lawsuit filing, the EEOC requested to mediate the charge, but the request was denied — though the filing does not make clear who denied the request.
McLoughlin, a resident of Hampton Bays, is the sister of former Southampton Village Trustee Joseph McLoughlin, who served from 2020 to 2022, and her father, also named Joseph, was a village trustee two decades prior.
She has been the court clerk since May 2008, working under Wilson from day one of her tenure.
Wilson had been the village justice, an elected position, since the Southampton Village Justice Court was established in 2002; she retired from both the village bench and the Southampton Town Justice Court on September 1, citing health issues.
McLoughlin’s lawsuit states that she and Wilson had a professional working relationship up until September 2019, when McLoughlin informed Wilson that she was pregnant.
“While Judge Wilson has always been a demanding supervisor, prior to her learning of [McLoughlin’s] pregnancy she did not mistreat [her],” the lawsuit states, adding that Wilson became “openly hostile” and questioned all of McLoughlin’s work.
In one incident alleged in the lawsuit, in December 2019, Wilson announced she was considering moving McLoughlin’s desk away from the service window and other court clerk, telling her, “You’re pregnant and cannot seem to concentrate,” and suggesting the new location would be better suited for a breastfeeding mother — though McLoughlin never discussed with Wilson whether she planned to breastfeed.
In the same conversation, according to the complaint, Wilson questioned McLoughlin’s “civil service credentials” and told her that her position was “hire or fire at will.”
The same day, McLoughlin told then-Village Administrator Russell Kratoville about the exchange she had with Wilson. Kratoville, according to the complaint, told McLoughlin that it did not constitute harassment and was just “a boss doing her job.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Wilson belittled McLoughlin in front of colleagues, attorneys and defendants, including a January 2020 incident when Wilson publicly screamed at and berated McLoughlin in the courtroom over a mistake that had been an attorney’s fault and didn’t change course when the attorney took responsibility.
McLoughlin filed a “complaint of unlawful harassment” with the village in January 2020 stating that Wilson was trying to make her return to work after having her baby untenable. But two weeks later, when Kratoville interviewed her, he attributed the problems to “poor management” and said it would be a learning experience for both McLoughlin and Wilson, according to the lawsuit.
“I do not comment on any specific incident,” Kratoville wrote on Friday when asked to respond to the lawsuit’s allegations. “I will confidently state that any informal or official personnel matter I witnessed or was brought to my attention was timely reviewed and/or investigated balancing the request of the employee(s) and the obligation to maintain a workplace free of harassment.”
McLoughlin says in the lawsuit that after she filed her complaint with the village, Wilson, for the first time ever, denied her an overtime and compensatory time request. Then, in March 2020, after McLoughlin began maternity leave, Wilson called her “nearly every day inquiring about the status of court matters, the location of files, and questioning work that [McLoughlin] had performed prior to her leave.”
When McLoughlin offered to come into the office to help find a file that Wilson called about, Wilson told her that she was not allowed or welcome at the office and would be written up for insubordination if she showed up, according to the lawsuit, which added that the same day Wilson had McLoughlin’s desk moved to a back office.
Further allegations in the complaint include Wilson telling people that McLoughlin had been exposed to COVID-19 when she hadn’t been, and Wilson threatening to downgrade McLoughlin to a part-time employee due to McLoughlin’s use of accrued leave time because of child care issues brought on by the pandemic — a downgrade that could have cost McLoughlin her employment benefits.
Wilson issued McLoughlin a “counseling memo” about her work performance on September 2, 2020. It was the first time McLoughlin was ever written up, and, according to the lawsuit, Wilson’s memo twice suggested finding “another solution” as an alternative to McLoughlin working in the justice court.
Two days later, McLoughlin amended her EEOC complaint to state that she was being retaliated against. In her lawsuit, she says Wilson’s treatment of her grew worse since the complaint.
The lawsuit states that in a meeting where Wilson was also present, Village Administrator Charlene Kagel-Betts issued McLoughlin a write-up for missing 40 minutes of work, though McLoughlin had previously explained to Wilson that she had gone out for a routine bank deposit that was part of her duties, and a stop in Village Hall. McLoughlin contests that a second write-up was for violating a rule that did not exist.
The lawsuit does not name a dollar amount but seeks damages for back pay, front pay, lost compensation and job benefits, inconvenience, loss of enjoyment, emotional distress, loss of reputation and mental anguish as well as exemplary and punitive damages “to deter future malicious, reckless, and/or intentional conduct,” plus attorney’s fees.
Wilson said on Friday that she hadn’t seen the lawsuit and could not comment on pending litigation. Southampton Village Mayor Bill Manger likewise said he could not comment on pending litigation against the village.
