FLINT, MI -- Former Flint City Administrator Natasha Henderson’s lawsuit against the city she once helped govern is expected to begin Wednesday, May 1, in federal court in Detroit.

Henderson, who filed a Whistleblower Protection Act lawsuit against the city, claims she was fired after alleging Mayor Karen Weaver routed donations given to help the city with its water crisis to a personal account rather than a fund managed by the Community Foundation of Greater Flint.

Weaver, who has denied that claim, was dismissed as an individual defendant in the case in February by U.S. District Judge Sean F. Cox.

“We are relieved that Ms. Henderson will finally get her day in court,” said Sarah Riley Howard, an attorney representing the former city administrator in the lawsuit. “We’re looking forward to a jury hearing the evidence in this case ...”

Kendall B. Williams, attorney for the city, said in an email to MLive-The Flint Journal that the city is prepared to “vigorously defend the claim of Natasha Henderson at trial, and prove to the jury that such claim has absolutely no merit.”

Henderson was briefly one of the most powerful individuals in city government, hired by former emergency manager Darnell Earley in February 2015 and granted broad powers by Gerald Ambrose, Flint’s last emergency manager, in advance of his departure later that same year.

She remained in her position after Weaver was elected in November 2015 but was fired by the mayor in February 2016.

The two women disagree on the reasons for the firing.

Weaver has testified that Henderson was fired for not having informed her of outbreaks of Legionnaires’ during the Flint water crisis until February 2016 --- an allegation the city administrator has denied.

Henderson’s lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in August 2017, but the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it in September 2018, ruling the case could move forward as a whistleblower case.