Trial Begins In 2015 Lawsuit Against SF District Attorney’s Office Over Racial Slur

A former SF District Attorney employee is suing over a 2015 racial slur incident that she says was followed by months of harassment from the office’s HR manager, after the California Supreme Court revived her case in 2024.

Wednesday’s trial began with testimony from Twanda Bailey, who worked for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office for 14 years before leaving in late 2015, as KQED reports. She told the jury that a former supervisor and co-worker, Saras Larkin, called her the N-word in January of that year.

Bailey said she initially kept the incident to herself because she believed HR Director Evette Taylor-Monachino was close with Larkin, and because she had seen other Black women in the office face harassment or removal. She eventually said a supervisor overheard her discussing the incident and offered to report it, but when Bailey later went to HR for a copy of the complaint, Taylor-Monachino told her no report existed.

According to KQED, Bailey testified that Taylor-Monachino then warned her that telling coworkers about the slur could create a “hostile work environment” for Bailey herself. She said the HR director subsequently gave her “nasty, unpleasant looks” and laughed at her in the office on a daily basis.

“I felt like I was working in a war zone. I felt like I had to dodge the HR manager,” Bailey testified. “I never experienced anything like this. I didn’t know if I was going to lose my job.”

Bailey reportedly filed a complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2015, though the agency ultimately found her claim insufficient, per KQED. That summer, she received a performance evaluation containing numerous negative allegations that she said had never previously been raised with her, as her prior reviews had all been overwhelmingly positive, prompting her to appeal the review.

She filed a formal complaint against Taylor-Monachino in August and said the HR director was reassigned to different duties two months later.

KQED reports that Bailey also described an encounter in a parking lot in which Taylor-Monachino allegedly pulled up alongside her car, lowered her window, and made a pointing gesture that Bailey interpreted as a threat. Bailey filed her lawsuit in December 2015, but the case was later dismissed on appeal by the city attorney’s office.

That changed in 2024, when the California Supreme Court overturned the earlier ruling and allowed Bailey’s case to proceed. The court found that a single instance of being called a racial slur by a co-worker could be enough to support a workplace discrimination claim, noting the particular “stinging barbs of history” carried by the epithet.

During Wednesday’s testimony, Bailey faced questions about whether she could have misheard the slur, with Deputy City Attorney Matthew Yan noting that no one else heard Larkin use one, according to KQED.

“You heard your longtime friend call you a racial slur and you didn’t confront her about it?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t. I walked away. I heard her correctly,” Bailey replied.

Bailey also testified that she struggled to concentrate and became fearful of supervisors after the incident, lasting only a week at a 2018 job with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

The case also resurfaced in 2019 following an incident at a forum for Black members of the SEIU 1021 union local, where civil rights attorney and former San Francisco supervisor Angela Alioto discussed workplace discrimination in city government.

As SFist reported at the time, the discussion was overshadowed by Alioto's use of the N-word while attempting to illustrate how frequently the slur was used in government workplaces and how such incidents could lead to hostile-work-environment lawsuits.

While many of the attendees found it inappropriate, with some members of the Democratic County Central Committee calling for Alioto’s removal, Bailey, who was at the forum, reportedly said she was not offended by Alioto’s remarks.

Bailey said she found the city’s handling of her own complaint more offensive, explaining that she was more troubled by “how the city and county treated me and handled the situation after I was called a n—.”

Bailey recently told the SF Bay View she hoped her case will prompt the city to change how it handles complaints involving racial slurs.

“I was the one that was called a racial slur,” said Bailey. “I didn’t do anything, and they made me feel like I did something wrong.”

The trial is expected to conclude in less than two weeks.

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