Former Texas attorney discovers Vermont is not the progressive paradise he expected

MANCHESTER - Attorney John Stasny moved to Vermont from Texas in March 2016, looking for a change from the criminal defense work he had been doing. Stasny and his wife were attracted to Vermont's natural beauty and progressive reputation.

"I viewed Vermont through the lens of what you hear in the news and what you see in the media, which has a lot to do with politics and Bernie Sanders, progressives and that sort of thing," Stasny said in a recent interview. "It's a bunch of hippie tree-huggers up here, right?"

If that's true, former Vermont Agency of Transportation worker Russell Codling wasn't one of them.

On Aug. 12, 2016, Stasny sat in a room with Codling, asking him questions about the work environment in the agency's maintenance garages for a deposition in a sexual harassment lawsuit against VTrans.

Stasny's clients — two lesbians and a gay man, all former highway maintenance workers — claimed they were verbally abused, groped, propositioned for sex and passed over for promotions and pay raises because of their sexual orientation.

'You look queer'

As Stasny squared off against Codling for his deposition, he jumped right into the language used in VTrans garages.

"Did anybody use words like 'queer'?" Stasny asked Codling.

"Sure. I do," Codling answered.

"Okay. In what context? How would you use the word 'queer'?" Stasny asked.

"How are your feelings? Because I think you look queer myself," Codling replied.

"Okay. Because of the hair?" Stasny asked, his shoulder-length hair reaching to his pink bow tie.

"Yeah," Codling said.

"All right. What about the bow tie?" Stasny continued.

"That there don't bother me," Codling answered. "It's just the long hair. I can't stand people with it."

Stasny remembers the attorney representing the state in the lawsuit dropping his pen onto the table at this point, and lowering his head into his chest.

Soon after, the state settled the case for $400,000.

The difference between Vermont and Texas when it comes to racism, sexism and bigotry, Stasny said, is that here, they're beneath the surface.

"As the state becomes more diverse, a lot more is going to bubble up, so I think Vermont does have a lot of work to do, and it's a long road to deal with those issues," Stasny said.

Bubbling to the surface

Sitting in the conference room of his law firm, Woolmington, Campbell, Bent & Stasny LLC, on a bright October afternoon recently in Manchester, Stasny says he loves Vermont and is here to stay.

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"My name's on the sign and I bought a house I'm never going to sell," Stasny said. "My wife and kids love it here. We ski all winter. So I'm glad we moved. There's not a place in this country that isn't going to have its problems with the way people act and treat each other."

Thinking about Russell Codling, Stasny said he represented one example of someone not holding back about the reality of workplace culture in some corners of Vermont.

"I think it's very rare," Stasny said. "I think it happens more often when people are retired like this employee was. He didn't have a reason to be concerned about the future of his job."

Another of Stasny's clients provides an example of racism bubbling up to the surface, only to be denied.

Is a noose offensive to a black person?

Roger Speid was a nursing assistant at Rutland Regional Medical Center when he sued the hospital in 2016, alleging he was racially harassed and then fired.

Among the accusations by Speid, who is black, was that someone hung a noose in his work area and allowed it to remain in place for days.

Stasny deposed Speid's supervisor in the case, Deborah Senesac, director of intensive care and progressive care. Senesac said she had made the decision to fire Speid after he was accused of threatening behavior while working with two white female employees 

"Do you think that nooses are particularly offensive to black people?" Stasny asked in the deposition of Senesac.

"Every person is different," Senesac replied. "I wouldn't be able to say."

Under further questioning, Senesac acknowledged that she was familiar with slavery and lynching from her history courses in high school.

"So do you think that history might make nooses particularly offensive to black people?" Stasny asked.

"Again, I don't know how each person would respond," Senesac answered. "Everyone is different."

Switching gears, Stasny asked Senesac whether she had an opinion on whether the N-word would be offensive to a black person. Senesac said she did not have an opinion.

"Okay if you saw the racial slur for a black person written across a black person's locker at the hospital, would you report that to human resources?" Stasny finally asked.

"I've never had a situation like that occur, so I wouldn't know how I would handle it," Senesac replied.

Speid's lawsuit was resolved without a trial. He no longer works at Rutland Regional Medical Center. Stasny said he was unable to say whether Speid was compensated.

"It's difficult in a deposition, you don't want to fight with a witness who's potentially playing a game," Stasny said of his interview of Senesac. "You've got a person who's under oath, who told you that despite her high position as an employer she doesn't know if what she needs to do is report seeing a racial slur graffiti-ed somewhere to the human resources department."

"That's a problem," Stasny added.

Speak up, and be explicit

Stasny has some advice for anyone suffering from sexual harassment and/or racial discrimination at work. Don't suffer in silence.

"I want to encourage employees to speak up and be explicit when they feel attacked, when they feel discriminated against," Stasny said. 

By explicit, Stasny means employees have to specify they are being targeted because of who or what they are.

"The problem is not going to get better unless people are speaking up and identifying what the problem is," he said. "I'm being treated this way because of my race. I'm being treated this way because of my religion, because of the country I'm from, because I'm gay, because I'm a lesbian. People need to be unafraid to do that."

Stasny is not naive. He knows what he's suggesting is not easy to do.

"I'd be a fool if I pretended like there weren't risks to that," he said. "Yes, the reality is even though the law protects you from retaliation, an employer might try to do it and get away with it anyway. And a lot of people find it hard to trade their job for a legal battle. I get that."

Stasny said his law firm gets about a dozen calls every week from people who say they are being harassed or discriminated against in the workplace.The firm turns away a lot more cases than it takes.

Some cases don't rise to the standard of affecting someone in a protected class. If your boss is an equal opportunity jerk to everyone, that's not illegal, that's just a terrible place to work, Stasny said.

Stasny also candidly admits that some cases simply don't pay enough to take, and he is keenly aware of the limitations of legal action, even when it's successful.

"Courts have the power to really help people who've been victimized who deserve some kind of justice to make them whole," he said. "But when it comes to really changing the culture in the workplace, the courts can't do that. That's got to fall on the people who run those workplaces."

Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosio@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanDambrosioVT.