In December of 2018, I was illegally fired from my job as an Alaska Assistant Attorney General by the Dunleavy administration, three hours after the new governor was sworn into office. I had worked at the Department of Law for 12 years through five administrations (four of them Republican) without incident. I had an impeccable personnel record in which I had been consistently promoted.
The context of my illegal firing was a "loyalty pledge" scheme concocted by Governor Dunleavy's then chief-of-staff, Tuckerman Babcock, in which the administration asked 1,200 non-unionized state employees to resign and pledge their political loyalty to the administration if they wanted to be rehired. I was also the target of numerous far-right bloggers and agitators in the state because of my social media activism. I knew that my firing violated the First Amendment and the Alaska Constitution's free speech rights.
The next month, in January of 2019, the ACLU of Alaska filed a lawsuit on my behalf and another separate suit on behalf of two state psychiatrists alleging that these loyalty firings were unconstitutional. In 2021, a federal judge agreed with both me and the psychiatrists, finding in each case, for slightly different reasons, that the firings violated all of our constitutional rights. The psychiatrists shortly thereafter settled their damages against the State for $450,000.
Last month I settled my damages claims for $350,000 and my portion of the money was wired to me today. Because this is public money, I am going to explain exactly where it is going.
40% of these damages go directly to my attorneys as compensation for their work. I cannot thank my lawyers enough for everything they did for me--the ACLU for filing the complaint; and Mark Choate and his colleagues for stepping in during the pre-trial phase. Adam Hansen, an appellate attorney in Minnesota, and his colleagues did the briefing that resulted in the order saying Dunleavy was liable for constitutional violations. After that, 50% of the damages go to my ex-husband. I got divorced during the course of the last five years. While the end of my marriage is not the State's fault, obviously the strain of the litigation did not help my family life and the law requires this disbursement due to the timing of the violations. Regardless, I am very much OK with this as he absolutely suffered too. After that, 22% of the damages go to the IRS.
In the end I will net approximately $75,000. I plan to use this money to re-roof my 1963 house that has no useful life left in the roof, paint the outside of the house, and do some overdue renovations. I also just paid off the remainder of my car loan today.
My case was scheduled to go to trial on damages (liability was established in 2021) in December of 2023. Most civil cases do not go to trial, and this one was no exception. Prior to settling the case, the State deposed me and below are some excerpts from that deposition (which is a public record). This should give you some idea of my general demeanor towards these people after five years.
The most important thing to me was preservation of the judge's order that the State had violated my constitutional rights. Not for myself, but for all of the State employees that do not belong to unions and who do not relinquish their rights as American citizens simply because they go work for the State. It was very crucial that this order remain in place as a collar on future administrations, and going to trial presented the very real risk that the State would appeal that order, and that it would be overturned on appeal. I could not let that happen so I settled the case.
This lawsuit was pretty much the worst non-death experience of my life and I'm really happy it's over. Most of all I am happy there is a federal court order in place that will theoretically prevent this from ever happening to any state employee again.
