This week, Kansas City Council’s finance committee is set to approve a $1.3 million settlement to 61-year-old lesbian firefighter Rebecca Reynolds who says that she faced years of abuse from her coworkers over her age, gender, and sexual orientation.
Should the settlement be approved, the Kansas City Star reports that Reynolds will drop two pending discrimination lawsuits and will promise not to file a third lawsuit based on an incident in which another firefighter named Pleaze Robinson III allegedly urinated on various possessions in her office while she was on medical leave in 2023. Robinson previously faced felony charges in connection with the crime after police convicted him of the action by identifying his DNA.
According to an April petition for damages filed in the District Court of Jackson County, Missouri, Reynolds completed the Kansas City Fire Department Academy when she was 40 years old and went on to serve as a medic and firefighter at several locations around the city.
During her 21-year tenure, she alleged that she was subjected to workplace humiliation and abuse, including an incident in which superiors allegedly screamed at her that she was “not normal” due to being a lesbian. In March 2023, Reynolds said, a co-worker intentionally tripped her, causing her to suffer a knee injury that ultimately required surgery. According to the Star, per court documents, another coworker allegedly said, “That’s why they shouldn’t hire old people” in response to a decision about how to set up equipment while working as a medic at a 2022 Kansas City Chiefs football game.
If Reynolds’ settlement is approved, the Star reports that it will be the largest of its kind that Kansas City has ever agreed upon in a discrimination case involving the city’s fire department. In October 2023, the city spent $800,000 settling a suit filed by former assistant division chief Brenda Paikowski, who said in a lawsuit that she faced a “hostile work environment on the basis of sex and retaliation.”
A 2021 report published by The Williams Institute found that nearly half of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. reported having experienced workplace discrimination. Meanwhile, the Movement Advancement Project reports that only 23 states, in addition to the U.S. Virgin Islands and D.C., have state laws explicitly prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Missouri state law currently does not ban discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, despite state lawmakers attempting to add these protections for the past 25 years.
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