According to Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeanette Rodriguez, her employer harassed and discriminated against her because of her race, sex and national origin by repeatedly sending her to remedial trainings at a rate far exceeding that of any other deputy. 

The sheriff’s office admitted it had treated Rodriguez differently by ordering her into further training, but maintained there was a legitimate and non-discriminatory reason: Rodriguez persisted in handling her firearm unsafely.

Last week, the federal appeals court based in Denver agreed Rodriguez had not presented evidence that would allow a jury to conclude the sheriff’s office mistreated her, at least in part, because of her identity. Although Rodriguez claimed to identify racial bias from two of her remedial firearms instructors, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit noted more widespread concerns existed within the sheriff’s office about her poor weapons-handling skills.

“Those reports bolster, not contradict, the non-retaliatory reasons the Sheriff and Rodriguez’s chain of command asserted to justify the adverse actions they took against her,” wrote Senior Judge David M. Ebel in an Aug. 18 order.

Both sides offered different interpretations of the nearly four-year sequence of events, with Rodriguez alleging the Arapahoe County sheriff targeted her with “non-sensical training requirements,” while the sheriff’s office insisted then-Sheriff David Walcher continued to give her chances to improve when he could have simply fired her instead.

For more than a decade, Rodriguez has been a detentions deputy at the county jail. The first dispute over her firearms training came in February 2015, when she and her instructor got into an argument over how she shot at a target. Then, another instructor removed Rodriguez from the training range after she pointed her gun at him and other students while improperly trying to holster her gun lying down.

The incidents at the range prompted restrictions on Rodriguez’s firearm use and a directive that she attend remedial training, which she completed. Although Rodriguez’s supervisor noted in the TrakStar performance software that Rodriguez “successfully completed” the remedial training, her instructors reportedly identified additional concerns with Rodriguez’s handling of a weapon.

After yet another round of remediation, superiors in the sheriff’s office recommended she no longer be allowed to continue as a deputy. In September 2015, Rodriguez met with Walcher, where she accused two of her firearms instructors of discriminating against her based on her race and sex. Walcher decided he would not terminate Rodriguez as long as she continued her remedial firearms training.

Rodriguez attended several more classes in late 2015, but still failed to meet expectations. Once again, there was a recommendation to remove her as a deputy, but Walcher gave her a chance to improve with more training. The same pattern occurred in early 2017, around the time Rodriguez filed a claim of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Rodriguez filed a lawsuit shortly after the 2018 election of current Sheriff Tyler S. Brown. She asserted violations of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act and Title VII, the federal law prohibiting employment discrimination, based on her status as a Hispanic female from Venezuela. She also alleged retaliation and a hostile work environment in the sheriff’s office.

“I believe I’m the only one, Spanish-speaking female, Venezuelan that speaks with an accent, and think that makes my — my situation very unique,” Rodriguez testified. “And it makes me a special target as well.”

During oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit in January, discussion ensued about whether Rodriguez’s remedial training was truly valid.

“I’m finding it hard to believe that she repeated those errors over and over and over again,” Ebel said. “It makes me feel there must have been some other faults, but I never saw any allegations … of specific other failures that caused her to flunk these tests.”

“We have a whole roster of people, it’s not just one person who claims she failed or that she was deficient,” Judge Gregory A. Phillips countered. “One fact in particular: She keeps her finger on the trigger, which is a problem. That is mentioned in more than one training.”

In March 2021, a trial judge ruled in favor of Brown, finding there were genuine safety concerns that prompted Rodriguez’s continued remedial trainings, and no indication her identity was a cause. One trainer specifically wrote that Rodriguez’s judgment with a weapon “is dangerous not only to herself, but other officers and bystanders.”

Rodriguez attempted to illustrate that her sex, race and national origin were factors in her treatment. First, she referenced five other deputies who committed similar, serious safety violations — including a white man who accidentally shot his gun while holstering it, a Black man who stored his weapon in an unsecured area of the jail and a white woman who accidentally discharged her weapon during a drill. All of them received one-time reprimands.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix was unconvinced those isolated incidents were comparable to Rodriguez’s pattern of problems.

“As Defendant notes, the documentation from each successive remediation demonstrates that Plaintiff continued to struggle with basic firearms fundamentals, and continued to demonstrate safety violations,” she wrote.

Rodriguez also argued two of her firearms instructors exhibited racist behavior. One of them allegedly had said, “Woohoo! We got another one,” when booking undocumented Hispanic immigrants into jail several years prior. Another instructor allegedly ran a shooting drill where targets painted as white hands were the “good guys” and targets painted as brown hands were the “bad guys.”

As for the first comment, Mix found it “at best, ambiguous,” and believed the “white hands/brown hands” anecdote was not connected to Rodriguez’s own training requirements.

The 10th Circuit panel upheld Mix’s conclusions. To show employment discrimination, Rodriguez first had to allege she suffered an “adverse employment action” because of her identity. Although the 10th Circuit assumed she had done so, the panel noted its doubts that a requirement for further training qualified as an adverse action, especially considering the sheriff explicitly refused to fire her.

Beyond that, the panel otherwise agreed the trainers’ allegedly-racist comments were insufficient for a jury to find the sheriff’s office discriminated against Rodriguez specifically, and the other deputies who had committed firearms infractions did not exhibit Rodriguez’s continued inability to handle guns safely.

“There was, then, no discriminatory context through which a reasonable jury could infer that any of the neutral acts taken against her were actually because of her race, sex, or national origin,” Ebel concluded in the opinion.

As for her retaliation allegation, the panel saw no evidence Rodriguez’s superiors knew about her discrimination complaint to the EEOC at the time they recommended her termination to the sheriff.

The case is Rodriguez v. Brown.