King County ignored civil rights complaints for 20 months (2024)

The King County office tasked with fielding and investigating complaints of discrimination at workplaces, in housing and by businesses essentially ignored all potential complaints for more than a year and a half, an investigation by an outside law firm found.

King County’s Office of Equity, Racial and Social Justice didn’t respond to or conduct intakes on any potential discrimination complaints from at least January 2022 through September 2023, the investigation found, as the office struggled with staffing, unclear roles and what employees described as a hostile work environment.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of discrimination complaints went unacknowledged and unanswered, the investigation found, with the possibility that the statute of limitations for some complaints could have expired while the county failed to respond.

County code charges the Office of Equity, Racial and Social Justice with investigating civil rights complaints about discrimination in housing, employment, contracting and public accommodations, like restaurants and hotels. The office can issue civil penalties, including fines and cease-and-desist orders, or can refer its findings to prosecutors.

“The failure of our systems to identify that this function had, essentially ceased happening is completely unacceptable,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said in an interview Monday. “I am extremely unhappy. This is not the way we do business.”

Constantine said the office had been staffing up rapidly, was scrambling to respond to constituent needs during the pandemic, and was “simply underwater.”

The office handles only complaints from unincorporated King County or complaints against the county itself. The city of Seattle and the state of Washington both have similar offices to investigate civil rights complaints in their jurisdictions.

The county last year commissioned a law firm to look into leadership issues at the Office of Equity, Racial and Social Justice after nine employees (five current at the time and four former) wrote to Constantine complaining of a hostile and disrespectful environment, unethical hiring practices and inequities in promotions and pay.

“Staff have been reduced to hostile working environment that severely impact their disability/ability to perform daily duties due to mental trauma and distress, with many staff citing and expressing an increase in depression, anxiety, hypervigilance, and burnout,” the staffers wrote.

The investigation, by the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, was completed this year at a cost of about $210,000. It did not find that the office, or its director, Anita Whitfield, had violated county code or policies.

But it did find that Whitfield had engaged in conduct that “could be viewed as unprofessional and/or that caused staff members to feel intimidated, fearful of retaliation, excluded, or ‘frozen out.’ “

And it found the office’s failure to respond to civil rights complaints, while not a violation of county code or any other law, “represents a significant operational shortcoming.”

Constantine, in 2020, named Whitfield the county’s first chief equity and inclusion officer and put her in charge of the Office of Equity, Racial and Social Justice. Whitfield stepped down from running the office in February, shortly after the investigation was completed.

A longtime county employee — she previously ran human resources for the entire county and was a senior manager for King County Metro — Whitfield remains employed as an adviser to the office and to Constantine, at a salary of about $258,000, the same amount she made as director. She plans on retiring this summer.

Whitfield, in a phone interview, said management of the civil rights program “was not optimal,” but “I do believe that we had the minimal procedures in place to ensure that residents’ of unincorporated King County needs would be met in that area.”

Whitfield said she “absolutely disagrees” with the charge that she acted unprofessionally.

“The work of leading a complex organization’s efforts to become anti-racist and pro-equity is not without controversy,” she said. “Many will feel that the leader’s approach, in this case me, is too strong, many will feel it’s not strong enough, but one thing that I am purposefully and intentionally is authentic.”

Constantine said Whitfield has a “really remarkable history of leadership” in county government and the community.

“She’s been here for many decades and definitely has a different style and different sensibilities than her younger employees, who just are coming from a different place,” Constantine said. “She and they had different expectations about her role and about what kind of leadership was acceptable.”

Last year, a county audit found the office’s roles are not clearly defined and it was struggling with increasing consulting requests from other agencies.

Monisha Harrell, a former senior deputy mayor of Seattle and the niece of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, took over as director of the office in March, with a salary of about $225,000.

Monisha Harrell, in a prepared statement, noted that individuals who tried to file complaints could still have pursued complaints under state and federal civil rights laws.

“The failure to respond to community members’ inquiries was a missed opportunity to expedite and support investigations of potential violations, improve King County operations, and reinforce our commitment to making King County a welcoming community where every person can thrive,” Harrell wrote.

Complaint inquiries largely come through a voicemail box, a dedicated email address or a web form set up to take civil rights complaints.

Estimates vary on exactly how many complaints were ignored for the 20 months the office failed to respond to inquiries. A former staff member told investigators the office receives about 400 complaint inquiries a year. The email inbox received 40 to 50 messages from people looking to file complaints in 2023, according to an employee responsible for monitoring the inbox, the investigation says.

Harrell, on Thursday, said the office received about 120 contacts in the 20 months. More than half of those, she said, did not apply to the office because they didn’t come from unincorporated areas or involve the county itself. She said the office is “actively processing the remaining inquiries.”

During the 20 months, anyone who emailed the inbox got an auto response, saying there would be “some delay” because of “staffing issues.”

“It left those inquiring with the mistaken impression that they would at some point hear back,” the investigation wrote.

People who contacted the office through the web form got no response.

The investigation describes a convoluted mess of staffing shortages and managerial inattention resulting in complaint inquiries being ignored.

When Whitfield was appointed director in 2020, the investigation says, a manager and an investigator staffed the civil rights program. When the manager left in 2021, that position remained vacant. When the investigator left later that year, Whitfield assigned the office’s deputy director to oversee the civil rights program.

The deputy director asked an executive assistant to monitor the inbox, and she “triaged what emails she could,” in addition to her regular duties, the report says.

The office hired a new civil rights investigator, but that person was fired after just seven weeks. (There was an investigation into that person’s hiring, after it was alleged she was hired because of her race, but the accusation was unsubstantiated.)

A new civil rights manager was hired, but that person left after about a year, and the deputy director described her as “abandoning” the position.

The work also stalled as Constantine’s office tried to move the civil rights complaint process from the Office of Equity, Racial and Social Justice to the county’s Human Resources department. The Metropolitan King County Council is still mulling whether to sign off on that move.

The staffing issues fit with a larger problem identified by the investigation. It found a “widespread perception” that Whitfield made “impulsive and unjustified personnel decisions” based more on loyalty or disloyalty than legitimate reasons.

“That did not happen,” Whitfield said. “Human resources was always included in my hiring decisions.”

Harrell pointed to a “lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities” under Whitfield’s leadership. She said that a new civil rights manager was hired last month, and that Constantine has approved the hiring of two additional civil rights investigators.

Constantine said things are “back on track after a very unacceptable amount of time.” The county, he said, continues to investigate “exactly what systems failures there were that caused this to be possible.”

Seattle Times staff reporter Patrick Malone and news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.