SHREVEPORT – A woman has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against Caddo Correctional Center for promoting a man she previously hired to a position they both sought.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana Shreveport Division on May 16.
Yolanda Bolden is a senior Environmental Services technician at the Caddo Correctional Center, where she has been employed since 1998. Over the years, Bolden said moved up from custodian to custodian II, and then was promoted to her current title. Bolden states that she has received training and certification in many “aspects of environmental services operations and supervisory responsibilities.” Bolden says she routinely hires, trains, and evaluates new employees as a supervisor.
Bolden hired Maurice Yarbrough, a male, for the position of Environmental Services technician in 2014. Bolden claims the man she hired had no supervisory experience or experience working with inmates in a correctional facility when he started the job. Bolden claims that when a position was created for an assistant supervisor of environmental technicians in 2015, both she and Yarbrough applied, and Yarbrough was picked.
She claims she was turned down for the job although she had 16 years of experience and had been performing the job duties listed for the assistant supervisor role. Bolden claims that she was sent home without explanation when she asked why she was turned down for the job, and then she was demoted to work under Yarbrough.
Bolden says she was discriminated against for being a woman, and that the defendant has shown a “a male preference for promotion.” Bolden says she would have receoved a pay raise with the new position, which not only affects her wages but her retirement.
Bolden is seeking “compensatory damages for the humiliation of demotion in title and duties that followed the promotion denial and the extreme embarrassment and emotional distress she says she experienced having to work under the supervision of the lesser-qualified male applicant who was promoted over her," as well as attorney’s and court fees of an unspecified amount.
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Shreveport Division, case number 5:18-cv-00648