Bergen County has agreed to pay just over $1 million to settle a federal civil rights suit by eight county employees who claimed they lost their jobs for supporting the opponent of County Executive James Tedesco III.

The settlement of $1,003,200, signed by Tedesco on Tuesday, provides payouts ranging from $25,000 to $146,000 to the eight fired workers. Three of the plaintiffs, who continued to work for the county in lower-paying jobs after the layoffs, were restored to their former pay levels. The settlement also provides $202,600 in legal fees and costs to Brach Eichler, the firm that represented the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs claimed in their December 2015 suit that their First Amendment rights to freedom of political association were violated when Tedesco undertook a purge of employees who supported Republican incumbent Kathleen Donovan in the 2014 general election. After defeating Donovan and taking office in January 2015, Tedesco, a Democrat, terminated 21 county employees who had either been open supporters of Donovan or nonsupporters of Tedesco. Tedesco maintained that the layoffs were needed for reasons of economy and efficiency, but the plaintiffs claimed that was a pretext given that the county hired nearly 600 new employees the same year.

The plaintiffs were immune from layoffs because they were civil service employees and not high-level policymakers for the county, the suit claimed. Their job titles include social worker, golf course manager, purchasing agent and keyboarding clerk.

But many of them participated in rallies to support Donovan's candidacy, said Anthony Rainone of Brach Eichler in Roseland, New Jersey. The layoffs were part of a two-step plan, where the first step was to transfer many of the plaintiffs to jobs in areas where they had little experience or in locations far from their homes, the suit said.

Among the plaintiffs are JoMarie Saccinelli, who was coordinator of monitoring and evaluation in the Department of Public Works. After Tedesco took office, she was transferred to a job answering a phone line for pothole complaints, she said in a court document. When there were not enough complaints to keep her busy, she was assigned to a file room with a large number of unfiled records. Her new boss there told her, “politics is politics—just go with it,” Saccinelli said. She was treated in this manner solely because she is a Republican, Saccinelli said.

“I went from managing 100-plus people as the coordinator of monitoring and evaluation to essentially performing low-level file clerk duties,” said Saccinelli, who was later laid off.

The settlement was placed on the record in U.S. District Court on Nov. 30, 2017, after it was reached with the assistance of U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven Mannion, said Rainone. The execution of settlement documents and distribution of funds was completed in early February, said Rainone.

“These are First Amendment rights. The attitude that this is politics as usual is not correct,” said Rainone. “We hope that public entities will take a look at a case like this and realize that people's livelihoods as employees of a public entity are real, and when things like this happen, you're devastating a lot of people.”

The suit initially sought to enjoin the county from terminating the plaintiffs, but that motion was denied by U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo. The plaintiffs appealed her ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit but then withdrew its appeal before a ruling was issued.

The suit also named Dominic Novelli, the county administrator; and Ralph Kornfeld, its director of personnel, as defendants.

Philip George of Eric Bernstein & Associates in Warren, who represented the county and Tedesco, said of the case's outcome, ”all parties accepted the fact that the settlement is fair and the court accepted the settlement.”

A Tedesco spokeswoman, Alicia D'Allessandro, said in a statement regarding the settlement, “The county resolved the eight claims on terms that provide for no admission of liability, no return to employment, and any counsel fees. It brings closure to the litigation.”