Mercer County Courthouse. Photo: Carmen Natale/ALM

An employee of the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance has been awarded $986,238 in a race discrimination suit against the state.

A Mercer County jury made the award April 25 to Nathan Johnson, an African American regulatory officer at the department. Johnson claimed he was subjected to a hostile work environment based on his race, and retaliated against for complaining about the discrimination.

It's the second time Johnson brought a discrimination suit against the Department of Banking and Insurance. He received a $125,000 settlement in a previous suit against the department in 2011, said his attorney, Sebastian Ionno of Ionno & Higbee in Pitman. But he claimed in the present case that his superiors mistreated him in retaliation for bringing the first suit, Ionno said.

Following a three-week trial before Judge Kay Walcott-Henderson, the jury awarded $984,000 for emotional distress damages caused by harassment and retaliation under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. The jury also awarded $2,237 in economic damages for a five-day suspension from the job imposed on Johnson.

The jury concluded that punitive damages were warranted, finding the state's wrongful conduct was “especially egregious,” and that upper management either actively participated in the wrongful conduct or was willfully indifferent to it. But the jury awarded only one dollar in punitive damages.

A 21-year veteran of state government, Johnson was issued a 30-day suspension from his job in 2017 for missing deadlines and other poor work performance. That suspension has not been implemented yet. Those charges were served on him in March 2017. In May 2017, he was tried on the charges in absentia while he was on leave for back surgery.

In 2016, he was suspended from his position five days for the same reason. His suit claimed that the supervisor who issued the suspensions to Johnson had only issued such a punishment to one other employee, and that person was also African American.

Johnson also claimed he suffered race discrimination when he was ordered to become the supervisor of the only other African American employee in his section. That person, he claimed, had a reputation as a problem employee and she also filed a discrimination suit against the department. But two white supervisors told Johnson they would fill out the performance evaluation for that employee, and then require Johnson to sign the evaluation, he claimed.

According to the suit, Johnson began reporting directly to Patrick Mullen in 2011. When Mullen held a meeting of people who directly reported to him, a notice of the meeting was not sent to Johnson, but he learned about it from a colleague. When Johnson appeared at the meeting, Mullen loudly informed him that the meeting was “not for you,” pointed to the door and told him to “get out,” the suit claims. Johnson hoped for a fresh start but was continuously subject to a discriminatory and retaliatory work environment since that incident, the suit said. Johnson is also excluded from attending off-site industry seminars, which his co-workers attend at the expense of the state, he claimed in court.

Johnson said he was assigned to evaluate an application to open a new credit union, but documents relating to the application were missing and no one knew what happened to them. The application had been pending for several years at the time it was assigned to Johnson, his suit claimed. In September 2011, after the company seeking the credit union approval filed a complaint about delays in its application, the missing application materials “mysteriously reappeared” in a filing cabinet outside Johnson's office, suggesting they had been hidden from him in an effort to set him up for failure, the suit claimed.

That act was a continuation of the discrimination and retaliation that Johnson had experienced during his years in the department, his suit said. In 2012, Johnson stopped receiving any work assignments, undermining his stature and standing in the workplace, the suit said.

Plaintiffs attorney Ionno said of the verdict, “I think you can see the jury was upset at how this man was treated. This is someone who wanted to come to work every day and do his job.” 

Deputy Attorneys General Craig Smith, Victor DiFrancesco Jr. and Daveon Gilchrist represented the state. The Attorney General's Office and the Department of Banking and Insurance declined to comment.