Staff photo by Dan Henry/Chattanooga Times Free Press – December 09, 2010. Rep. Jay Neal, R-LaFayette, participates in a legislative roundtable at Dalton State College early Thursday morning. A former employee accused a North Georgia official of racial discrimination in a lawsuit filed this week against a state agency.
Nicole Jenkins said Criminal Justice Coordinating Council Executive Director Jay Neal treated her unfairly as the only black woman in a position of leadership at the time. Prior to overseeing the council, Neal was a state representative from LaFayette from 2005-13.
“Neal began harassing me almost immediately,” Jenkins wrote in a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in October 2017, months after she was fired. “Both Neal and [Deputy Director Steven] Hatfield routinely accused me of subjecting my staff to bullying and Neal specifically stated he thought of me as an abuser similar to domestic violence offenders, based on his attending the Georgia Commission on Family Violence conference and research his wife conducted, despite his knowledge that I worked with victims of domestic violence. I was extremely upset by such baseless accusations.”
Jenkins’ attorney, Adian Miller, said she received “right to sue” permission from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a procedural step in a discrimination case. She filed her lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in Atlanta on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council denied Jenkins’ allegations in a statement to the Times Free Press, calling diversity a “fundamental value” among the council’s leadership.