Jury Finds No Discrimination in Firing of Mayor’s White Aide

A former member of Mayor Tom Bradley’s staff, who claimed that he was the victim of reverse discrimination because he was white, was not discriminated against at all when he was dismissed, a Los Angeles federal court jury decided Monday.

The panel also held that Bradley, former mayoral aide Terry Hatter Jr., who is now a Los Angeles federal judge, and nine other city administrators and employees had not retaliated against Steve McNichols when he filed complaints alleging discrimination with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the California Fair Political Practices Commission in 1977.

McNichols, who worked for the City of Los Angeles between 1975 and 1982, claimed that city officials--with Bradley’s consent--fired him from the mayor’s Office of Urban Development in 1977 because he stood in the way of new job assignments for minority workers. He was then rehired to a lesser position to “pacify me,” but he left the city again in 1982, McNichols charged.

He claimed that he got into trouble with his superiors when he uncovered and reported evidence of alleged fraud in the handling of federal grants by city agencies.

Bradley’s Testimony

The mayor denied the allegations, testifying during the two-week trial that McNichols was fired because of incompetence.

The jury deliberated only four hours before its verdict early Monday afternoon.

McNichols said afterward: “We’re a little surprised that the verdict came back so quickly.”

Bradley and the other defendants declined comment.

U.S. District Judge Russell Smith of Missoula, Mont., presided over the trial since Hatter, who was appointed to the federal bench in Los Angeles by then-President Jimmy Carter in 1979, was one of the defendants.