A federal court has reaffirmed that a former Colorado state employee fabricated evidence for his discrimination lawsuit, and will now consider the state’s request to be awarded $300,000 in attorney fees.

In June, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty concluded that Yoseph Yadessa Kenno, a former database administrator for the Governor’s Office of Information Technology, had created a fraudulent email exchange and manipulated an audio recording to use in his lawsuit against his former employer.

“The true scale of Plaintiff’s fabrication in this case may never be known. But what is known is the significant degree of fraud on the Court and interference with the judicial process,” wrote Hegarty at the time.

On Sept. 14, Hegarty rejected Kenno’s request to reconsider his earlier ruling. Kenno had written to the court explaining that the state had prevailed by “withholding evidence of incalculable importance.” He also accused the state of having “planted” 1,700 altered messages in his office email account.

Hegarty concluded that Kenno’s arguments were unpersuasive or that he had the opportunity to raise them previously, but did not.

“While he complains about Defendants’ alleged conduct throughout his briefing … he ignores the fact that the Court’s order was based on his conduct, not theirs,” Hegarty wrote of Kenno. He added that even if he were to reopen the case to address Kenno’s allegations of fabricated evidence, that would likely mean the state would also get to explore its own claims against Kenno about additional falsified evidence.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office is asking Hegarty to award the state $300,861.33 for its costs in defending against the lawsuit.

Kenno sued the Governor’s Office of Information Technology after having his privileges rescinded and being placed on an improvement plan in May 2018. He presented an earlier email exchange with his boss in which he described a conversation he had with a health benefits employee. While discussing missing contributions to his health savings account, the employee told Kenno, who is Black, they would not give him a “welfare check.” 

Kenno’s supervisor, according to the email, told him to “refrain from making similar accusations going forward” after he wrote that his race had something to do with the welfare remark. His supervisor then took the corrective action against Kenno for his performance.

If the email was legitimate, it could have established that Kenno’s employer had retaliated against him after he engaged in protected conduct — raising a discrimination claim to his superior. But the state contended and Hegarty agreed that Kenno had fabricated the email exchange, as well as manipulated a piece of audio evidence.

Hegarty dismissed the lawsuit, saying the discovery of fraud had cast doubt on all of Kenno’s representations to the court.