A staff member has filed suit against the office of U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, claiming racial discrimination and retaliation by a supervisor in his office.

       Patrice Campbell, a constituent services representative in Lincolnshire and the office’s only Black employee, according to the federal lawsuit, claimed that on March 3, supervisor Karyn Davidman, while talking about using lanyards to secure face masks, told her, “You are going to have to get a rope and put it around your neck.”

       Taken aback by what she took as a reference to lynching, Campbell objected and said that she cannot say things like that, and explained that the “rope” to which Davidman referred is called a lanyard, the suit stated.

       The next day, on a joint video conference, Davidman insisted that Campbell show her face on the video, and recounted the incident and “laughed hysterically,” adding that her husband also told her the comment was inappropriate, according to the suit.

       Afterward, Davidman called Campbell to tell her, “You should have seen your face when I told that story!” the suit stated.

       Matt Fried, a spokesman for Schneider, D-Deerfield, shared a statement that the office doesn’t discuss specific details about personnel, but looked forward to responding in court, and is confident that the office will be exonerated once all the facts are known.

       “To be clear, the office took prompt and appropriate corrective action to address Ms. Campbell’s initial complaint,” the statement read. “However, the federal lawsuit filed ... by Ms. Campbell does not provide a complete or accurate representation of the issues or her treatment by any office personnel. There is another side to the story.”

       Campbell claimed that the comments by Davidman, the office’s Casework and Veterans Affairs Director, created an intolerable hostile work environment.

       On July 14, Campbell filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights.

       U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider outside the U.S. Postal Service Chicago headquarters on Aug. 18, 2020. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

       As a caseworker who lives in Zion, Campbell helps residents of Schneider’s congressional district on Chicago’s North Shore to get help from or make claims involving federal agencies. Davidman determines whether and to what degree the office will help a constituent.

       Campbell further claims that Davidman favored white employees in the office, and showed a pattern of bias toward people of color, particularly African Americans, in and outside the office, and has accepted very few requests for help from them.

       In the year and a half that Campbell has worked there, the nine cases accepted on behalf of African Americans were assigned to Campbell, making her feel like the “Black people representative” for the office, the suit stated. Davidman also complained about an African American operations manager at the U.S. Postal Service, and announced that she would only work with a white operations manager.

       The suit stated that the “rope” comment was offensive in relation to white lynchings of Black people.

       Since Campbell’s complaint, she was assigned only to complicated and “onerous” tax cases, rather than the broad range of cases that she worked previously, making her the frequent target of callers’ anger.

       Campbell’s suit stated that she was “so emotionally traumatized that she was forced to” take leave from her job for the month of April and worked a reduced schedule in May and June, and was overloaded with work in retaliation.

       But Davidman was not sufficiently disciplined for her actions and remained Campbell’s supervisor, the suit stated.

       rmccoppin@chicagotribune.com

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