LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A second former staffer for Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar has filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging she faced retaliation after complaining that Huizar had an affair with a staffer and had instructed his aides to perform inappropriate tasks, it was reported today.
Pauline Medina, 45, said in her discrimination, harassment and wrongful-termination lawsuit that Huizar launched a campaign to push her out in 2017 after she told the councilman's chief of staff that her boss was in a relationship with someone else in the office, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Medina, who left Huizar's office in June, said she also was punished for complaining about a “lack of boundaries” in her workplace, with staffers being ordered to pick up the councilman's dry cleaning, collect his children from school and move his wife's car so that she would not get a parking ticket on street-sweeping day, according to The Times.
Many of the allegations made by Medina are similar to those contained in a separate lawsuit filed last week by Mayra Alvarez, another former Huizar aide. Both share the same attorney, Terrence Jones. Both claim that Huizar gave preferential treatment to an unnamed aide with whom he was having an extramarital relationship.
Huizar, in a statement, called Medina a disgruntled former employee who “left on her own accord after being confronted with an investigation that revealed her misconduct.”
“This lawsuit is full of misrepresentations and I deny all these crazy allegations,” he said, according to The Times. “This is nothing more than a coordinated political attack by individuals who share the same attorney and have a vested interest in denigrating my name and supporting certain political opportunists.”
Huizar did not say who he believes is coordinating the alleged attack.
Alvarez, like Medina, is alleging she faced retaliation after complaining about an affair. However, Alvarez also said she was punished for voicing concern that Huizar aides had been assigned to work during city time on the upcoming council campaign of Huizar's wife, Richelle Huizar. She's running in the 2020 election to succeed Huizar in the 14th District, which stretches from downtown and Boyle Heights to Eagle Rock.
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