$15.4 Million Federal Jury Verdict in Racial Discrimination Case: Wilson v. City of Fresno
Executive Summary
On March 11, 2026, an eight-member federal jury in the Eastern District of California returned a unanimous verdict against the City of Fresno, finding the city liable for racial discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against two former code enforcement employees. The jury awarded lead plaintiff La-Kebbia “Kiki” Wilson (Black woman) $15,000,000 in damages and co-plaintiff Charles Smith (White man) $400,000, for a combined verdict of $15,400,000. Attorney fees will be sought in a separate motion. The ten-day trial, held before Judge Kirk E. Sherriff, centered on allegations that a code enforcement supervisor used a single racial slur to describe Wilson to Smith and that the city retaliated against both employees after they objected to the conduct.
| Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| La-Kebbia Wilson — Damages | $15,000,000 |
| Charles Smith — Damages | $400,000 |
| Total Jury Verdict | $15,400,000 |
| Attorney Fees | To Be Determined (Separate Motion) |
Case Information
Wilson et al. v. City of Fresno, No. 1:19-cv-01658 (E.D. Cal.)
Court: United States District Court, Eastern District of California (Fresno)
Judge: Hon. Kirk E. Sherriff
Matter: Racial discrimination, harassment, and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA)
Verdict Date: March 11, 2026
Trial Duration: 10 days (February 24 – March 11, 2026)
Parties
Plaintiffs:
• La-Kebbia “Kiki” Wilson — Former code enforcement officer, City of Fresno (Black, age 55 at trial)
• Charles Smith — Former code enforcement employee, City of Fresno (white)
Defendant:
• City of Fresno — The original 2019 complaint also named individual defendants, including several supervisors and city officials, though by trial the city appears to have been the sole remaining defendant.
Counsel
Plaintiffs’ Counsel:
• Kevin Schwin, Schwin Law PC (Fresno, CA)
• Gary Goyette, Goyette & Associates Inc. (Sacramento, CA)
Defense Counsel:
• Mandy Jeffcoach (lead trial counsel) and Devon McTeer, Whitney, Thompson & Jeffcoach (Fresno, CA)
Key Findings
The jury found the City of Fresno liable for racial discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against both Wilson and Smith.
Wilson was awarded $15,000,000 in damages. Smith was awarded $400,000.
The defense had argued Wilson’s damages should be capped at approximately $83,200 (the estimated cost of eight years of counseling) and Smith’s at approximately $17,000 (based on the city’s last job offer to him). The jury emphatically rejected those figures.
Wilson had sought between $5 million and $20 million at trial. Smith had sought between $1 million and $10 million.
The verdict was unanimous among the eight-member jury.
Attorney fees will be sought in a separate motion and are expected to include recovery for the Fresno City Employees Association, which funded the lawsuit.
Factual Background
This case has its origins in a long and troubled employment relationship between Wilson and the City of Fresno’s code enforcement division. Wilson, who is Black, began working for the city in code enforcement in 2004. Within her first several years, she experienced what she described as racially motivated conduct, including a supervisor being overheard discussing racial stereotypes and making references to hanging African-Americans at City Hall. Wilson filed a prior discrimination lawsuit against the city, which was settled in 2012.
Wilson was among several employees laid off in 2013 during citywide budget cuts. When she returned to the department in 2016, she testified that she was given the worst equipment, the worst office space, and the worst truck — a vehicle she described as caked in mud with a metal rod protruding from the upholstery. She had to fight the city through the Civil Service Board to be deemed qualified for a promotion. Wilson filed internal complaints with Jennifer Clark, the head of the planning department, which at the time oversaw code enforcement. A city investigation found no wrongdoing.
Charles Smith joined the department full-time in 2018 after having previously worked as a part-time employee. He testified that he immediately sensed tension between his supervisor in code enforcement and Wilson. According to Smith’s testimony, the supervisor told him to stay away from Wilson, calling her derogatory names and claiming she had gotten her job back by “playing the race card.”
The Racial Slur
The pivotal event in this case occurred during a field inspection. After the supervisor and Smith inspected the home of a Black family, the supervisor reportedly told Smith that he was not a racist, then referred to Wilson using the N-word. According to trial testimony, the supervisor noted that he used one variant of the slur rather than another, as if the distinction made a difference. Smith told the supervisor he did not want to be in the middle of issues between him and Wilson.
In his deposition and again at trial, the supervisor denied using the slur or even recalling the conversation. The jury clearly did not believe him.
Smith subsequently quit the department rather than accept a transfer to what the plaintiffs described as a punitive reassignment — the “tire team,” a unit tasked with retrieving abandoned tires from throughout the city. Smith alleged the transfer was retaliation for his refusal to participate in the supervisor’s hostility toward Wilson. On his way out of the department, Smith called Wilson and told her what the supervisor had said about her.
The City’s Investigation
What happened next became a central credibility issue at trial. Upon learning about the slur, Wilson had a profane emotional outburst in a City Hall hallway — a reaction the city later cited as a policy violation. Wilson also told then-Mayor Lee Brand about the slur. According to the complaint, the mayor said the supervisor should be fired.
Instead of firing the supervisor, the city hired an outside investigator, Dallas Selling, to examine the allegations. Plaintiffs’ counsel attacked the investigation on multiple fronts at trial. Goyette challenged Selling’s qualifications, noting that her practice was in family law and that she had never conducted a workplace discrimination investigation. Under questioning, Selling acknowledged that while she had signed a document stating she performed expert legal services in labor and employment law, that reflected her willingness to perform such work, not her actual prior experience.
Perhaps more damaging was an email introduced into evidence showing that the city’s personnel director, Jeff Cardell, asked Selling to “bifurcate” the investigation — that is, to expand the scope of what was supposed to be an investigation of Wilson’s complaint to also examine Wilson’s own behavior. Plaintiffs’ counsel framed this as the city turning its investigation of the victim against the victim herself.
The investigation’s conclusions were striking. It found that the supervisor practiced “favoritism” but determined he had not violated anti-discrimination policies. He was to receive only a reprimand. The report went further: it recommended that Wilson be fired and Smith not be rehired. Wilson ultimately received a three-day suspension.
The supervisor, meanwhile, remained employed by the city. He was still working there as of the date of trial — more than seven years after the alleged slur.
Wilson was terminated by the city in September 2022, three years after filing this lawsuit, though the reasons for that termination were not at issue in the trial.
The Long Road to Trial
The original 107-page complaint was filed in Fresno County Superior Court in October 2019 and was removed to federal court the following month. The case was delayed by the pandemic, extensive pretrial motion practice, discovery, and what was described as a judge shortage in the Eastern District. Seven years elapsed between the filing of the lawsuit and the start of trial on February 24, 2026.
The litigation was funded by the Fresno City Employees Association, which spent approximately $1 million supporting the case. The union’s business manager, Sam Frank, said the association funded the suit because Wilson was a union member when the alleged discrimination occurred.
The Trial
The jury was composed of four men and four women. A unanimous verdict was required.
Wilson’s testimony was emotional and direct. She told the jury that as a Black woman, she could never make mistakes, that policies were applied to her differently, and that she always felt noticed and stood out. She described learning about the slur as an “out of body experience.” She listed a pattern of slights: inferior equipment, delayed repairs, being reprimanded for her emotional reaction to learning she had been called a racial slur by her supervisor.
The defense attempted to undermine Wilson’s damages claim by introducing other potential sources of emotional distress, including the death of her mother and her role caring for an autistic nephew. The city’s attorneys also highlighted that Wilson ranked seventh on the applicant list for a promotion she did not receive, suggesting race was not the reason.
During closing arguments, plaintiffs’ attorney Kevin Schwin told the jury that the city had engaged in a “campaign of retaliatory character assassination and bullying” to sweep the racial slur under the rug. Defense counsel Mandy Jeffcoach defended the supervisor, referenced his denial of the slur, and argued that if Wilson was entitled to any damages, they should be limited to the cost of counseling.
The jury instructions were notable. Judge Sherriff instructed the jury that a single use of the N-word could be considered severe and pervasive enough to constitute discrimination, and that the city bore the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence — a heightened standard — that it would have taken the same adverse employment actions regardless of any harassment. The city was unable to meet that burden.
Analysis
The sheer size of the award is certainly notable. A $15 million verdict for a single plaintiff in a code enforcement racial discrimination case against a mid-sized California city is extraordinary. The defense’s suggestion that Wilson’s damages amounted to $83,200 — basically the cost of therapy sessions — reflects a common defense framing that treats emotional distress as a clinical line item rather than a measure of dignitary harm. The jury’s response suggests they understood the case differently: not as a dispute over the cost of coping, but as a reckoning for an institution that failed to protect one of its employees and then punished her for objecting.
The credibility of the city’s investigation was devastating to the defense. Hiring an outside investigator with no employment law experience, directing that investigator to simultaneously examine the complainant’s own conduct, and then emerging from the process with a recommendation to fire the complainant while giving the accused supervisor a reprimand — that sequence tells a story that is very difficult to explain to a jury. The “bifurcation” email from the personnel director effectively became an exhibit that illustrated the city’s priorities: the investigation was not about finding the truth, it was about managing the problem, and the “problem” in the city’s eyes was Wilson, not the supervisor who used the slur.
The fact that the supervisor remained employed by the city through the date of trial — more than seven years after the alleged incident, and despite the former mayor reportedly saying he should be fired — is the kind of fact that speaks louder than any expert testimony. Jurors do not need to be told what it means when the person accused of using a racial slur keeps his job while the person he targeted gets suspended, investigated, and ultimately terminated.
Smith’s $400,000 award is also notable, if more modest. His claim rested on a theory that he was retaliated against for refusing to go along with his supervisor’s hostility toward Wilson — a “bystander retaliation” theory that can be difficult to prove, particularly when the employer can point to facially neutral explanations for the adverse action (here, a routine reassignment). The city argued Smith was never actually harmed: he was offered another position, he quit voluntarily, and his angry exit email undermined his credibility. That the jury still found for Smith suggests they credited his account that the tire team assignment was punitive and that his departure was constructive.
The jury instruction on the N-word deserves attention. Judge Sherriff instructed the jury that a single use of the slur could be considered severe and pervasive enough to establish a hostile work environment. In briefing, the Court also noted the recent decision by the Supreme Court of California, Bailey v. San Fransisco Dist. Attorney’s Office, 16 Cal.5th 611 (Cal. 2024) (holding that a single allegation of a racial slur could create a triable issue of whether there was severe or pervasive racial harassment). That instruction reflects the weight of authority in the Ninth Circuit, where courts have recognized that the N-word occupies a uniquely harmful position in the lexicon of racial epithets. For practitioners evaluating cases involving racial slurs, this verdict reinforces that a single documented use of the N-word — even one that occurs outside the plaintiff’s presence — can anchor a multimillion-dollar verdict when combined with evidence of institutional indifference.
Finally, this case is a reminder of the financial exposure municipalities face when they mishandle discrimination complaints. Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer acknowledged that the verdict would have a “significant financial impact” on the city, while the City Council President warned of “tough decisions ahead” to balance the budget. The city will almost certainly pursue post-trial motions and may seek to reduce the award or obtain a new trial. But regardless of what happens on appeal, the message from the jury is clear: the cost of institutional indifference to racial discrimination might be measured in the tens of millions by a jury.