Alphonso David, a Black civil rights attorney, describes in the legal complaint a “racist, biased culture” at the organization he led for more than two years.
He claims that board members told him that he was initially paid less because he is Black. He says he was encouraged by a board member to stop mentioning his race in public comments. He also recounts being told by a senior HRC executive that his public support for racial justice risked alienating White donors and specifically “White gay men.”
The same senior executive, according to the complaint, criticized a Black staff member for meeting with a Black-owned consulting firm without a White person present because the firm’s employees might perform worse if they think they are working for people of their race.
“HRC underpaid David, and then terminated him, because he is Black,” David’s lawyers wrote in the complaint, which was filed at 8 a.m. in federal court in New York.
The HRC had no immediate comment on the filing Thursday morning.
The lawsuit is likely to add fuel to simmering frustrations at the HRC and within the broader liberal activist community about accusations within their ranks of overt and implicit workplace discrimination and bias. The Washington-based organization, founded as a political action committee for gay rights in 1980, has faced criticism over the past decade for falling short on its commitment to racial diversity and transgender rights. David arrived in 2019, after working for Cuomo.
“I had to challenge a system and a pattern of bias that has not only affected me, but it has affected way too many Black and Brown people,” David said in an interview, explaining his decision to sue. “Discrimination and bias are rife within HRC. And I’m just the latest person to be affected.”
David was fired from the HRC in September, weeks after New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) revealed that he had helped seek signatories for a letter that sought to undermine the accusations of Cuomo’s first sexual harassment accuser, Lindsey Boylan. That letter was part of an effort that amounted to “unlawful retaliation,” according to a report on Cuomo’s behavior by James’s office.
David also offered advice to Cuomo aides and shared with the governor’s office personnel records he had retained about Boylan after leaving his job in Albany. The revelations led to an uprising among some low-level HRC staff, who called for his resignation during internal meetings.
David has argued that his interactions with Cuomo’s office were proper and did not justify his dismissal. He said that he was obligated as an attorney to share the documents with his former client, and that he told Cuomo aides at the time that he would not sign the letter, which described claims about the accuser he could not verify personally. He said he also suggested changes to make the unreleased document less objectionable.
After the revelations about his role in Cuomo’s response to the sexual harassment claims, the chairs of HRC’s two governing boards, Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson, initially issued a statement supporting David. As the public backlash grew, they announced an investigation into David’s interactions with Cuomo’s office. Weeks later, they asked him to resign, he said, and he refused.
He was fired days later, with Cox and Patterson writing that his actions amounted to a “violation of HRC’s Conflict of Interest policy and the mission of HRC” that had caused damage to the group’s “interests, reputation and prospects” and compromised David’s ability to lead the organization.
David was one of several professional casualties of the attorney general’s investigation, which found that Cuomo had harassed 11 women and led to the governor’s resignation. The board chair of the feminist group Time’s Up, Roberta Kaplan, resigned after the report found she had spoken to a Cuomo adviser about how the governor should handle the accusations. The CEO of the same group, Tina Tchen, quit weeks later after text messages revealed she had called off a plan for a statement of support for Boylan after others at Time’s Up had conversations with Cuomo aides. Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, the governor’s brother, lost his job at the network after the investigation revealed he had been trying to help the governor fight the allegations.
David is seeking punitive and compensatory damages from the HRC for violations of New York state and federal law, as well as reinstatement to his position leading the organization, according to his complaint.
“I’m hoping that we peel back the onion and find some sunlight,” he said. “I’m hoping that we recognize that institutions that purported to represent all members of our community actually have to do just that.”
David was hired as the first Black head of the HRC at a time when the organization was dealing with multiple controversies about its handling of racial issues. A senior staff member at the organization resigned in 2018, a year before David joined, after an investigation found she had used “the n-word” to recount a personal story and to describe a situation she found upsetting, according to an email at the time from the group’s previous president, Chad Griffin.
That followed a 2015 internal review of the workplace culture at the HRC that found staff concerns about the organization’s commitment to diversity, a sense among staff that it was a “white gay man’s club” and complaints that non-White and transgender staff “feel tokenized” and undervalued for their skills.
Griffin and HRC leadership made public commitments after the controversies to address the concerns. But David now argues that the fact that Griffin, who is White, was not disciplined for the reputational damage to the organization under his tenure is evidence of a double standard.
“Nothing happens to the White predecessor. Nothing,” David said in an interview. “He wasn’t asked to resign. He wasn’t terminated. He wasn’t censured.”
Racial tensions remained inside the organization after David was hired. J. Maurice McCants-Pearsall, a Black activist who worked as the HRC’s director of HIV and health equity when David was fired, posted a public letter in September denouncing David’s dismissal.
In the letter, McCants-Pearsall described the moment when David’s hiring was announced to the staff. He said the facial expressions and body language of his White colleagues at the organization suggested disapproval when David entered the room.
“Yet, I wasn’t surprised,” he wrote. “[F]or decades and in recent years HRC has struggled with addressing internal racism among staff.”
Upon taking the job, David gave a speech at an HRC fundraising dinner calling for his predominantly White and male audience to see beyond themselves as they pursued their political activism.
“See yourself in the bisexual Black man living with HIV in the South with little to no access to health care. See yourself as the young Latinx lesbian immigrant who has been brutalized and persecuted in her own country,” he said in the speech. “See yourself in the person who looks nothing like you.”
In his court filing, David’s attorneys say he was approached after the speech by a White board member who pushed back on the message he had tried to deliver. The board member told David in front of other HRC staff that his audience knew he was Black so he did not need to tell them, the complaint states.
Concerns about the workplace climate at HRC have also continued since David’s departure. Richard Brookshire, a Black communications specialist, quit his job at HRC in November after 90 days of employment, explaining in his resignation letter that he had not been given the mentorship or guidance he felt he needed to be effective.
In an interview this week, he said he was warned by other non-White staff when he arrived at the organization to not trust anyone.
“The reason I left was because there wasn’t a culture of belonging at HRC. I was a Black face in a high place,” Brookshire said. “A lot of racism in liberal organizations is in what is not said, what is not done … You can feel that. You can feel when you are being excluded.”