Capitol police to produce 6 years of gender data in Bellmorite's discrimination suit

A federal judge on July 24 ordered that the Capitol police, which protects congress, turn over six years of data on the gender make-up of the force, as a Bellmore woman’s sex discrimination lawsuit against the force continues.

Chris Sourgoutsis, 32, filed her suit after she was fired in 2015 for what she said were minor infractions for which male recruits would not have faced the same treatment.

Among the infractions for which Sourgoutsis was written up while in training were: being in improper uniform, talking on a cell phone during lunch and, on one occasion, sitting down briefly on a low stone wall during a double shift watching the Capitol Visitors Center.

According to recent filings, Sourgoutsis is also alleged to have cursed, and “criticized an officer during a role-playing exercise.”

In court papers, Sourgoutsis claimed that she was belittled by male supervisors during her training in Georgia to become an officer, and that she saw male recruits doing similar things without facing consequences.

Sourgoutsis and her attorney had initially requested that the Capitol police produce a gender breakdown of the force for every year since 1974, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather ruled that the force only had to turn over data for the years 2011-2017.

“Knowing the degree to which women were a minority on the USCP for each of the last 20 years does not make it any more or less probable that Ms. Sourgoutsis’s gender was the true reason for the disciplinary actions taken against her and for her termination,” Meriweather wrote.

However, she added, any data that showed “a dearth” of female officers during and close to the time that Sourgoutsis was employed there might help her case.

According to Meriweather, the D.C. Circuit Court has looked at statistics about the make-up of a workforce in past cases when evaluation discrimination claims in which the employer was accused of “attempting to purge its force” of a protected class of employees.

Thus, the gender breakdown for 2011-2016 is relevant to Sourgoutsis’s case, she said.

In court documents, the Capitol police dispute Sourgoutsis’s claims, including her characterization of various meetings with superiors, and say that she took the legal route before exhausting her other options.

Capitol police officials say that all actions toward or against Sourgoutsis “were taken for legitimate, non-discriminatory and non-retaliatory reasons,” according to court documents, adding that Sourgotsis’s claims for damages are “speculative in nature.”

They have asked that a federal court throw out the suit with prejudice, which would mean that Sourgoutsis could not file another suit for the same claim.

A status conference on Sourgoutsis’s case is set for Sept. 7 in D.C.