Ex-City Homelessness Official Alleges Wrongful Termination, Discrimination

The former deputy director of the city’s homelessness strategies department sued the city in September, alleging racial discrimination and wrongful termination. 

James Carter left City Hall last September after he claimed a top city bureaucrat ordered him to resign or be fired. He resigned. 

Carter’s departure followed a series of setbacks. They included the city’s decision not to follow a common practice to temporarily have him lead the homelessness department after the director took another job, frustrations over his pay and a promotion for a former boss he claimed made a racially derogatory comment about him.  

Emails obtained after public-records requests also show Carter repeatedly clashed with Housing Commission officials during his time in the city’s homelessness department, including over shelter suspension data that ultimately showed Black San Diegans were disproportionately impacted. 

Carter, who is Black, alleges in a lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court that he wasn’t paid equitably and was passed over for multiple promotions during his nearly eight years at the city. Carter also claims in the suit that his onetime supervisor, now a deputy director in the city’s Human Resources Department, failed to apologize after declaring that Carter looked like Aunt Jemima in a 2020 Zoom meeting.  

Aunt Jemima, the former headscarf-wearing namesake of a breakfast food brand, was based on a stereotype of Black women who served White families and were portrayed in demeaning minstrel shows featuring White men wearing blackface. 

In multiple statements, a spokesperson for Mayor Todd Gloria wrote that the city “denies all allegations” in Carter’s lawsuit, which it described as “baseless and false.” 

“The City of San Diego adheres to stringent anti-discrimination policies that ensure race, religion, sexual orientation and gender are not factors in employment decisions,” Gloria spokesperson Rachel Laing wrote. “Upholding these protections also means promotions are based solely on performance and thus are appropriately denied to employees with documented performance issues. The same applies to reasons for termination.” 

Carter’s attorneys argue that his experiences don’t match up with the zero tolerance policy that the Gloria administration has championed and the mayor’s pronouncements about pay equity. 

Carter, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Oxford, joined the city of San Diego in 2015 after past work in Washington D.C. and Portland. He first served as a senior budget analyst in the finance department and then as a program coordinator in the Performance and Analytics Department the following year. He became deputy director of the city’s homelessness department in December 2021. 

Carter began raising discrimination concerns before he joined the homelessness department – and months after a 2020 interaction with a supervisor that unsettled him.  

Carter’s attorney L. Marcel Stewart said Jon Terwilliger, then Carter’s supervisor in the city’s Performance and Analytics Department, exclaimed during a 2020 Zoom meeting that Carter looked like Aunt Jemima as he and a colleague tested filters, including one that included a headscarf. 

“When I stated that Mr. Terwilliger’s comments were off-base, Mr. Terwilliger had no regard for my feelings, did not apologize, demonstrated no remorse, and in effect stood by his reference that I looked like Aunt Jemima,” Carter wrote in an April 2021 discrimination complaint obtained by Voice of San Diego. 

A personnel department official later deemed the complaint substantiated in a July 2021 city memo that Stewart shared with Voice. 

It’s unclear how the city may have disciplined Terwilliger. He did not respond to messages from Voice on Thursday. 

After the investigation, Carter’s lawsuit claims he was excluded from meetings and that city Human Resources Director Julie Rasco told him to “stop being a victim” when he implored her to take steps including ordering Terwilliger to apologize. 

Carter also filed a separate April 2021 discrimination complaint over a direct appointment process he alleged kept him from competing for multiple promotions in the department.  

Both complaints followed the release of the city’s first-ever pay equity study, which documented disparities between Black and White male employees. 

Carter’s frustrations didn’t end after he became deputy director of the city’s Homelessness Strategies and Solutions Department.  

Nearly a year after he took the new role, Stewart said that Carter realized he missed out on across-the-board salary increase that other deputy directors received in late 2022 and was now paid less than most of his counterparts in the city. He began pushing for a raise. 

The lawsuit also alleged that Carter “reported what he believed in good faith to be a variety of illegal actions occurring within various city programs, including but not limited to discrimination in the delivery of housing and/or homeless services operated and/or funded by Defendant San Diego.” 

Stewart declined to elaborate on those alleged illegal actions but acknowledged tense interactions with the city’s housing agency over suspensions of shelter residents. 

Records previously obtained by Voice show Carter repeatedly pressed Housing Commission officials and others over data tied to homeless residents barred from city shelters and the pace of their response. Carter, who served for a time on the Regional Task Force on Homelessness’ ad-hoc committee on Black homelessness, expressed concern when data showed Black San Diegans were disproportionately impacted by those policies and about what he believed was a slow-moving response to the problem. 

“How much progress *should* have been made on this issue. I can’t say,” Carter wrote in a December 2022 email to Housing Commission officials noting that the agency had first become aware of shelter suspension issues in 2020. 

The city’s housing agency has said it moved as swiftly as it could as it also grappled with challenges tied to the pandemic. In early 2023, the Housing Commission ordered reforms to Father Joe’s Village shelters, which had an especially lengthy list of suspended clients who were disproportionately Black.  

Emails obtained by Voice revealed tension on other subjects too.  

In November 2022, as Father Joe’s Villages prepared to temporarily move Golden Hall shelter clients to facilitate building upgrades, Carter repeatedly urged the agency to prioritize removing vending machines. 

“Can you tell me what date the vending machines were removed (as requested) from both (Golden Hall) and the Neil Good Day Center?” Carter wrote in a Nov. 15, 2022, email. 

After Casey Snell of the Housing Commission clarified that the nonprofit expected to remove the machines after the move, Carter wrote that it would have been ideal to proceed sooner given his request the prior week and asked for the specific date that Father Joe’s contacted the vending machine company. 

Snell pushed back, arguing that “the team is under extreme stress with the pending move tomorrow for (Golden Hall).” 

“Asking them to dismantle the isolation tents and services and confirm dates they called to arrange for pickup of the vending machines seems out of touch given all they are trying to accomplish,” Snell wrote. 

Around this time, Carter’s lawsuit says he also raised concerns with multiple city officials when he learned Terwilliger had become a deputy director in the city’s Human Resources Department – and alleges he was ignored. The suit says the city also refused then-homeless department director Hafsa Kaka’s request to give Carter a larger raise after he continued to flag concerns about his salary. 

When Kaka left the city in March 2023, the lawsuit states that the city quickly moved to name Sarah Jarman the department’s new permanent director rather than temporarily appoint Carter to the interim post. Carter saw this as an affront as deputy directors are often at least temporarily appointed. His lawsuit claims he had previously been selected over Jarman for the deputy director role. 

In his lawsuit, Carter alleges that Gloria’s Chief of Staff Paola Avila told an unidentified city official that Carter would never serve as director of the department. 

“This senior member of Mayor Gloria’s staff went on to say: ‘anyone but James’ because he was ‘not a team player’ and had ‘problems with management,’ impliedly due to his past (Equal Employment Investigations Office) complaints,” the lawsuit states. 

In a statement, Avila wrote that the Gloria administration has prioritized pay equity and diversity and does not tolerate racial bias or discrimination. 

“We adamantly deny ALL allegations made by Mr. Carter and we look forward to defending the city in litigation,” Avila wrote. 

Immediately after Jarman’s appointment, Carter’s lawsuit says the city handed out pay increases to his subordinates that left him more humiliated.  

Salary information from the city payroll department, however, shows Carter received three pay raises in the months following Jarman’s appointment that amounted to a nearly 7 percent salary increase. 

Stewart argued Carter’s pay increases offer a narrow view that doesn’t address how his raises compared with those other city officials received. 

“That doesn’t address if he is receiving a raise that is substantially lower that’s tied to this racial disparity,” Stewart said. 

One of the increases came in September, Carter’s last month at the city. That same month, his lawsuit says he once again followed up with the city’s Human Resources director about his former boss’s promotion in her department to no avail.  

Around the same time, records show Carter received a right to sue letter from the state’s Civil Rights Department after submitting a complaint alleging harassment, discrimination and retaliation in the few years since his former boss allegedly said he looked like Aunt Jemima. 

Seventeen days after the state issued the letter, Carter alleges the city gave him the ultimatum: resign or be fired. 

One of Carter’s attorneys argued that the forced resignation was the latest punishment for reporting discrimination. 

“It seems that repeatedly rather than do the right thing consistent with the city’s policy those in charge chose to do the wrong thing and penalize James for speaking up,” Stewart said.  

Laing argued otherwise. 

“Anyone can make false or misleading allegations in a legal complaint, but we are confident the city will present the truth regarding the allegations made by Mr. Carter,” she wrote. 

Attorneys for Carter and the city are for now set to appear in Superior Court in January for an initial case management conference. 

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated former city official James Carter’s role in the city’s Performance and Analytics Department. He was a program coordinator.