A federal judge has ruled that Johnny Kimble, a longtime supervisor in the state’s Equal Rights Division, was subject to discriminatory behavior at the hands of the division’s former administrator, J. Sheehan Donoghue. Credit: Rick Wood

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Johnny Kimble spent a career helping others address employment discrimination as a staffer and supervisor at the state's Equal Rights Division in Milwaukee.

But it didn't save him from becoming a victim of illegal race and gender bias within that very agency, a federal judge has found.

"I guess it's ironic; I'd been protecting rights of other people and couldn't protect my own," Kimble said.

Late last month, a federal judge in Milwaukee ruled that Kimble, who is African-American, had been improperly denied years of raises because of his race and gender. The judge found the state Department of Workforce Development and the former administrator of the Equal Rights Division, J. Sheehan Donoghue, guilty of discrimination.

"I feel vindicated," said Kimble, 61, who retired in 2005 after 33 years of service. Now he awaits either a settlement, or further litigation, regarding the level of back pay and damages he is due.

Bill Cosh, a spokesman for the state Department of Justice, said attorneys for the state are "considering whether an appeal is appropriate."

U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman heard the case in July. On Feb. 25, he released a 22-page ruling that found Donoghue essentially ignored Kimble for the 12 years she served as administrator; though he was a member of her management team, she never met with him one-on-one, not even to award the single $300 bonus he received during that time.

On some occasions, however, she blamed him for problems that were actually associated with the Madison office. Kimble was section chief in Milwaukee for 29 years.

Meanwhile, Donoghue gave Kimble's peers base pay raises, and upped her executive assistant's pay to nearly what Kimble earned for supervising the Milwaukee office of the Equal Rights Division, which included about 18 investigators and support staff. She gave out the raises without consulting the workers' evaluations or direct supervisors.

Appointed in 1991

Donoghue, 66, of Sayner in Vilas County, was a member of the state Assembly when Gov. Tommy Thompson appointed her to the Workforce Development post in 1991. She left the agency in 2003. She did not return a call Monday.

Her explanation that Kimble didn't do his job well enough to merit a raise was unconvincing, Adelman found.

"Donoghue was not a credible witness," the judge wrote. "In almost every major area of her testimony, she contradicted herself and/or was contradicted by other witnesses. In addition, she was frequently evasive and sometimes defensive. And, the other evidence in the record does not support her testimony."

Adelman cites several law review articles in explaining how some bosses with very subjective employee evaluation can fall into making judgments based on stereotypes, "of which they may or may not be entirely aware," including those concerning black males. He concludes that here, Donoghue "seemed to regard plaintiff as if he were 'veiled with images of incompetency.' "

Testimony showed that if the Milwaukee office was successful, Donoghue credited the team. If it was Madison, she credited the section chief. When Kimble said they needed technical support, it was dismissed. When a white peer made the observation, Donoghue promised help. Kimble's suggestion of a newsletter was ignored until someone else repeated it. Then Donoghue called it a good idea.

Told of raise

Kimble had already had his exit interview in 2005 when he went to have lunch in Madison with longtime colleague Bob Anderson, who held the position between Kimble and Donoghue. Anderson remarked that he was surprised that another agency worker, who Anderson felt didn't do as good a job as Kimble, had recently gotten a raise. That got Kimble doing some more research about pay and led to his lawsuit.

"I think he just wanted me to know, maybe even just subconsciously, so he spoke up," Kimble said.

His attorney, Arthur Heitzer, noted that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declined to find probable cause when it first investigated Kimble's complaint. The decision was made by an EEOC employee from Indiana, Heitzer said, because the EEOC in Milwaukee has a work-sharing agreement with the state Equal Rights Division.

Heitzer also pointed out that none of the findings impugned the work of the front-line staff at the Equal Rights Division, but were focused squarely on Donoghue, a political appointee.

Now, Kimble lives on his state pension, he said, "though it's substantially less than it should have been."

He estimates that, just based on the raises they know about now, without full research into payroll records, his current pension of about $25,000 a year would have been about $7,000 a year more now.

He remains surprised the case took so long, and that the state went to trial.

"I just hope it sends a warning out to people, and cautions them about their behavior," Kimble said.



