A second employee is suing the Maine Center for Disease Control.
A federal court judge ruled Friday that office manager Katie Woodbury can join the whistle-blower lawsuit filed by the former Maine CDC division director who first raised questions about document shredding within the department.
The judge also allowed two more CDC officials — Deputy Director Christine Zukas and Office of Minority Health and Health Equity Director Lisa Sockabasin — to be named as defendants. The suit originally named only CDC Director Sheila Pinette and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC.
The lawsuit will now have two plaintiffs and four defendants.
The ruling came Friday in response to a motion to amend filed in February by Sharon Leahy-Lind, the former director of the Division of Public Health who brought the suit. She has claimed her bosses at the CDC ordered her to shred public documents and then harassed and retaliated against her when she refused.
Woodbury’s claims are similar to Leahy-Lind’s, including harassment and retaliation for speaking publicly about problems at the CDC.
Woodbury echoed many of Leahy-Lind’s claims about issues within the department when she spoke to the Sun Journal in April 2013. The motion to amend alleged that Woodbury became a target of “a substantial campaign of harassment” after that.
At one point, according to the motion, she complained to the human resources department and was told, “Whistle-blowers get guilty consciences,” “Maybe you are imagining things” and, “Maybe you shouldn’t have talked to the newspapers.”
The motion also alleged that Woodbury’s co-workers were told not to speak to her, she was repeatedly assigned to different locations and supervisors, and she was no longer allowed to occasionally work from home to accommodate medical appointments.
Woodbury still works at the CDC as an office manager.
U.S. District Court Judge George Z. Singal also ruled on other motions filed in the case. His decisions generally fell in Leahy-Lind’s favor and allowed the suit to move forward largely intact.
He dismissed part of Leahy-Lind’s claim that the CDC violated the federal Family Medical Leave Act because she faced retaliation for taking medical leave. The judge said the state is immune from that portion of her claim.
He dismissed one of Leahy-Lind’s claims of defamation, but allowed her other defamation claims to remain.
He allowed Leahy-Lind and Woodbury to continue to claim they were retaliated against for speaking publicly, a significant part of their lawsuit.
“At a minimum, Pinette, as the director of the CDC, knowingly tolerated a campaign of harassment,” the judge wrote in his decision.
The Maine Attorney General’s Office typically represents state officials and state agencies in court, but the AG’s Office withdrew as counsel for DHHS and Pinette in January “due to a recent and unexpected development.” No details have been disclosed.
The state is now paying for private lawyers to represent DHHS and CDC officials. Lawyers for DHHS, Pinette, Sockabasin and Zukas did not return calls Friday.
Cynthia Dill, the lawyer for Leahy-Lind and Woodbury, called Friday’s rulings “really good news for my clients.”
“It still, of course, has to be proven before a jury, but it’s good news for Sharon and good news for Katie at this point,” Dill said.
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