The AJC reported last week that  Chandia Harris filed a lawsuit in a Georgia federal court Thursday against the department, alleging she was fired in September 2022 for insubordination after she complained about a hostile working environment. Harris said she spent seven years employed by the department between 2006 and 2013, then returned in April 2021 as a lieutenant at its youth development camp in Macon. She said that’s when the department became aware that she is homosexual and identifies as a lesbian woman.

Harris claims that shortly after her return, she overheard a conversation between her supervisor, the department’s facility director, Cynthia Dupree, and two other women, “insinuating that gay people were going to hell, that gay people were an abomination, and that people are not born gay.”

A spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday that it had yet to be served with Harris’s complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that Dupree fired Harris for refusing to work a scheduled shift and becoming insubordinate. Harris claims her requested leave had been approved, and that Dupree’s reasoning was a cover for wanting Harris gone due to her sexual orientation.

Harris wants her job at the department back, in addition to unspecified damages, including back pay. She said she took her discrimination concerns to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in October 2022 and was granted the right to sue the department in August.

GNN/AJC