Jeffrey Schweers

Democrat staff writer

Rick Kearney, the millionaire philanthropist and developer of a local homeless shelter, is challenging the constitutionality of Leon County’s human rights ordinance in an attempt to get out from under a sexual harassment claim filed by a former employee.

The ordinance as adopted in 2010 protects people against harassment and discrimination based on gender, race, color, religion and sexual orientation, among other categories.

The Jan. 20 motion to dismiss Sarah Bohentin’s lawsuit is scheduled for a hearing Wednesday before Leon Circuit Judge Charles Dodson.

“We’re asking that it not be used in this case because our clients didn’t get the benefit of administrative remedy required by state law,” said Phillip B. Russell, the Tampa attorney representing Kearney. “Those administrative remedies are there to help small businesses like this, to deal with claims we believe are frivolous.”

They’re also challenging the fact it doesn’t have a cap on punitive damages.

“I don’t see how their argument holds water,” said Shaina Thorpe, an employment lawyer from Tampa representing Bohentin. “They are really trying to get it tossed out in whatever manner they can.”

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While Thorpe’s main focus is representing her client’s claim, she is concerned about the motion’s potential impact on the anti-discrimination ordinance.

“I see this as a rich white guy trying to deprive the LGBT community of the only form of protection they have against discrimination and harassment,” Thorpe said. “Like it or not, that is a side effect and the LGBT community has every right to be concerned.”

Also, she said, when a lawyer wants to challenge the constitutionality of an ordinance, certain rules require the lawyer to file a notice to the state attorney’s office or attorney general to give the county a right to join the lawsuit and defend the ordinance.

“They gave no notice to my knowledge,” Thorpe said. “My first argument is they failed to comply with the rules on that issue.”

She said she’s asked county lawyers to attend Wednesday’s hearing.

Kearney, the founder, CEO and chairman of Mainline Information Systems, also runs the Beatitude Foundation, which donated $4 million of the $7 million cost for the Kearney Center. It opened in 2015.

“I think it’s disingenuous she brings up the rights of LGBT individuals in the county,” Russell said. “This has nothing to do with the scope of protection for LGBT individuals.”

His motion makes no mention of the LGBT community or other protected categories.

All the county has to do is amend the ordinance to include the administrative remedy, Russell said. It would be up to the judge to determine the scope of the order, he said.

Jeff Peters, an attorney who helped write the ordinance, said the remedies set out in the county’s human rights ordinance are clear and supported by case law, which also sets out the type of remedy and amount of money a plaintiff can receive.

“What I find very disappointing for Mr. Kearney and his legal team is that they would attempt to harm a very important human rights ordinance that was amended to provide the very first protections ever for the LGBT community in Leon County,” Peters said.

If Kearney and his lawyer succeed in using the county ordinance as a defense, “there will be no protection for lesbian and gay people” in Florida’s capital.

They should change their tactic, he said. “You don’t need to claim something that is not true, that the Leon County ordinance is unconstitutional, in my opinion.”

The statute is similar to other anti-discrimination statutes in at least a dozen other counties, said Jessica Tice, who worked on the commission that drafted the ordinance.

“It is a really good ordinance and so in keeping with what other communities have done,” Tice said. “I’m surprised someone has found fault with it.”

Thorpe said she filed the complaint under the human rights ordinance Oct. 31 to meet a one-year statute of limitations deadline. The 12-page lawsuit is against nine companies in which Kearney is a managing member or director.

Bohentin claims she was fired a year earlier as the result of “quid pro quo” sexual harassment. They had had a relationship, but she ended it after she began seeing someone else, the complaint said.

Eventually, he fired her and rescinded a bonus, she said.

After Kearney filed his first motion to dismiss, Bohentin filed an amended complaint claiming that Kearney slandered Bohentin when he filed a report to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in November accusing her of deleting company emails, the Democrat previously reported.

“My client received word from the FDLE that they will not be pursuing any charges against her,” Thorpe said.

Russell said the defamation count should be dismissed because Bohentin didn’t give his client enough notice “to cure the alleged defamation,” that it wasn’t specific enough and that “demand for punitive damages should be stricken as unconstitutional and/or premature.”

The defamation claim is a direct result of the FDLE complaint, Thorpe said.

Bohentin refused to accept a severance check for $7,500, according to a previous report in the Democrat. In an affidavit signed five days before the lawsuit was filed, Claude Walker, a board member of one of those companies, Beatitude Partners, said the company offered her a $7,500 severance agreement and a good job reference.

Bohentin, who was hired by Beatitude but claims to have performed duties for all the companies, refused to sign the release unless she received $100,000, Walker said.

“We felt it didn’t properly reflect her experience with the organization,” Thorpe said. “When she refused, lo and behold, Kearney and his organization go to the FDLE with these claims, which I believe to be fraudulent. This was retaliation for refusing to play ball.”

That’s when “their spokesperson Ron Sachs came out and started a media war where he brought it out where they tried to settle this with her and she rejected it,” Thorpe said.

Sachs is the CEO of Sachs Communications. A longtime friend of Kearney, he is acting without pay on behalf of Kearney in the matter.

"Rick Kearney is among the most enlightened and progressive business leaders in our community and state — and has a genuine commitment to diversity and inclusion in all that he does, including race, age, gender and LGBT issues,” Sachs said in an email to the Democrat. “The transparent smokescreen that is being manufactured in this legal filing is an attempt to shift the focus from the facts and create a false controversy in a flimsy effort to try the case in the court of public opinion."



Contact Schweers at jschweers@tallahassee.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeffschweers.