Federal jury awards woman $130,000 in discrimination lawsuit against Arkansas National Guard

court gavel
court gavel


The Arkansas National Guard has been ordered to pay more than $130,000 to a woman after an eight-person jury found, following a five-day civil trial in federal court earlier this month, that she had suffered discrimination by being passed over for promotion.

Da'Vetta Flowers, a personnel manager with the Arkansas Military Department, filed the lawsuit in August 2018 against Maj. Gen. Mark Berry, adjutant general of the Arkansas National Guard from January 2015 until August 2019. In August 2019, Maj. Gen. Kendall Penn was substituted as the defendant when he took over as adjutant general.

In the complaint, Flowers said she had been subjected to discrimination and retaliation by a power structure within the Arkansas Military Department that favored white employees for promotion over equally or better-qualified Black employees, and that she had been subjected to a pattern of harassment and retaliation.

Flowers, who was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army and Arkansas Army National Guard in 1989, went to work for the Arkansas Military Department in 2009. According to her complaint, she had earned a bachelor's degree in social work in 2000 and a master's degree in human resources management in 2003. She was hired by the department in 2009 as a full-time assistant personnel manager and was promoted to personnel manager in 2015.

Her complaint alleged that on a number of occasions, she and other Black employees were passed over for promotion in favor of lesser-qualified and lesser-educated white employees and that internal personnel decisions used an interview and promotion process by which "connected white AMD applicants and employees were pre-selected for open positions" to the detriment of qualified Black applicants and employees.

Flowers also said that despite her position as personnel manager, she was often excluded from hiring, promotion, transfer and other staffing decisions inside her department, and that employees from her department were reassigned without her consent to cover for deficient employees in other departments.

On Aug. 23, 2017, the complaint said, Flowers filed a charge of workplace discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission outlining numerous instances in which she said she was bypassed regarding personnel decisions in her department and harassed because employees were reassigned without her input. She also alleged that staff members were encouraged to write up complaints against her and memorandums were circulated under her name that she was not aware of, among other actions.

After four days of testimony, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Flowers on the question of race discrimination and awarded her $105,804 in lost wages and benefits, and $28,000 in other monetary damages. On the question of retaliation, the jury found that Flowers had not suffered retaliation.

Flowers was represented by Michael Laux of Chicago and Austin Porter Jr. of Little Rock. Penn was represented by Brittany Edwards and William Bird III, attorneys with the Arkansas attorney general's office. The trial was presided over by Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr.


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