This week’s $2.5 million judgment in a civil suit against UC Riverside is not the only recent gender discrimination case that has cost the campus.

On Tuesday, a Riverside jury awarded that amount to former chief campus counsel, Michele Coyle. Coyle said she was fired in 2012 after she raised the issue of gender bias in the office of the vice chancellor. Coyle’s suit said she brought attention to the cases of two female employees, as well as ongoing actions by then-Vice Chancellor Dallas Rabenstein, but was rebuffed by then-Chancellor Tim White and others.

Two years after Coyle’s firing, the campus was ordered to pay nearly $200,000 to a different employee who had filed a bias complaint with administrators and said she was retaliated against.

The fine came out of a Department of Labor audit. It was the same audit that Coyle cited in her lawsuit. She said one of the reasons she was fired was to keep her from telling the auditors about the continuing gender bias at the campus and the efforts to cover it up.

Documents provided by the Department of Labor said auditors found UCR was in violation of Executive Order 11246. The specific sections of the order the auditors cited deal with discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.”

Auditors said the employee “experienced adverse employment actions during the UCR tenure examination process because of race and sex.” The report goes on to say that the employee was denied tenure, “which subsequently resulted in a termination of the employee.”

The university was ordered to pay the former employee a total of $182,000 in back pay, “front pay,” benefits and interest.

UCR officials said the case was not indicative of general practices on campus.

“The (Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which conducted the) audit specifically found no systematic discrimination in hiring, promotion, compensation, or terminations by UCR,” officials said in a prepared statement. “The campus and the OFCCP resolved a single case involving a female professor who claimed that a female department chair discriminated against her on the basis of gender and race. The campus denied any discrimination but resolved the matter and the audit was resolved.”

In a third case a year later, sociology professor Karen Pyke raised concerns of gender and racial bias in hiring in the sociology department. The department was considering hiring a professor who would be a joint hire between the School of Public Policy and the sociology department. Pyke called it a “backdoor” hire through the School of Public Policy and objected to the candidate based on what she saw as a lack of diversity in her department.

In an email sent May 5, 2015, she said it was “highly inappropriate for the administration to allow and approve the hiring of yet another white man faculty member for our department. … This is a classic example of how racial and gender discrimination occurs in hiring.”

She urged her colleagues to object “as a matter of principle.”

On Sept. 3, 2015, Pyke sent a letter to UCR administrators complaining that she had faced retaliation in the wake of her statements.

“In response to my having raised the issue of discrimination against women and under-represented racial minorities. … I have been put in the cross hairs of an affirmative action complaint,” Pyke wrote.

She said other colleagues with “far less experience and fewer accomplishments” were being paid more than she was.

Pyke is currently on sabbatical and said she could not discuss the case.

UCR spokesman James Grant said the university could not comment on Pyke’s case for this story.

History professor Jennifer Hughes was familiar with all three cases highlighted here. Those three, she said, were the most egregious she knew of.

“But for each of those there are more,” she said.

Hughes was part of a faculty senate task force that examined the issues of discrimination, harassment and retaliation on campus as they related to gender and race. The report was published in February 2015, predating Pyke’s case. Hughes said there was a systemic effort to suppress complaints in prior years.

“One of the surprising things was how many faculty responded to the survey and how many had had concerns or complaints,” she said. “I think we really came to understand how this system was working to suppress complaints.”

The report, she said, was meant to be solutions oriented and offered eight points for improving the situation. She’s not sure how much progress has been made.

“I think that it would be a step in the wrong direction for the University of California to appeal this decision in the Coyle case,” she said. “I would hope that UCR takes it as an opportunity to reflect on its history and think about ways to move forward, to be an example for other campuses.

“I would hope UCR would position itself to become a leader and a model.”

Contact the writer: 951-368-9595 or mmuckenfuss@scng.com