Tulare Public Cemetery District to pay $150k, settling discrimination lawsuit

A discrimination lawsuit filed by a former Tulare cemetery groundskeeper against the Tulare Public Cemetery District has been settled to the tune of $150,000. The board voted unanimously to accept a settlement agreement at its August 28 Special Board Meeting.

Harvey Demp, a former groundskeeper, sued the district last year and alleged that he was harassed and discriminated against on the basis of his race and color. 

He claimed that the district failed to prevent discriminatory behavior before he was wrongfully terminated.

While neither side was able to voluntarily disclose the terms of the settlement, the settlement text was made available through a California Public Records Act request; the settlement makes clear that the district continues to deny Demp’s allegations and that the district does not admit any liability.

According to the text of the settlement, the $150,000 was “intended to compensate [Demp] for alleged economic damages (alleged to be approximately eleven thousand dollars ($11,000)), and alleged emotional distress,” meaning $139,000 was awarded to Demp for emotional distress.

The final settlement outlined a total of 21 terms, including a confidentiality clause restricting Demp from speaking about any “negotiations, agreements, facts, terms, amounts and provisions of this Agreement,” though the text states that the district would be required to provide the agreement as part of potential Public Records Act requests.

Other aspects of the lawsuit such as evidence and depositions of district employees will not be made public.

The Lawsuit

According to the suit, Demp started working for the cemetery in September of 2021 as a full time groundskeeper under the supervision of head groundskeeper David Faria and district manager Clara Bernardo.

Demp claims he was the only Black employee at the district.

The suit states, “During Plaintiff’s employment with Defendant, Defendant’s supervisory/management employees frequently engaged in unwelcomed, unsolicited and offensive, harassing and discriminatory conduct in the workplace towards Plaintiff on the basis of his ancestry, race and color.

The offensive, harassing and discriminatory conduct took a variety of forms including but not limited to:

1. David Faria using the word n—-r in the workplace;
2. David Faria using the word n—-r in Plaintiff’s presence at work;
3. David Faria calling Plaintiff a n—-r while at work;
4. David Faria using the word “n—-ritis” in a demeaning and degrading manner while talking to Plaintiff at work; and
5. David Faria stated, “he was going to hang Plaintiff from a tree.”

The suit continues to claim that these incidents took place “numerous times in the workplace” and that Bernardo observed them, yet “took no effective action to prevent and/or stop the unlawful race-based comments and conduct.”

Demp claims that Faria and Bernardo then wrongfully accused him of drinking alcohol on the job on May 17, 2023, after Faria found empty beer cans in an area that he and a coworker had worked.

He claims that Bernardo sent him home from work with four hours pay and without performing an alcohol screening or fitness examination. The next day, he claims Bernardo accused him of drinking beer and working under the influence of alcohol before firing him.

Faria later ended up resigning from the cemetery in December of 2023.

Tulare residents speak out

Former audit committee member, Linda Maloy, told the Voice last year that employees, management, and the trustees all have known that Faria “spoke like this on the job.”

“They [Bernardo and Faria] started plotting how to fire him [Demp] a year ago,” said Maloy.

She said she heard about the plot “because someone couldn’t keep their mouth shut.”

“I don’t know whether or not David has called Harvey a n***** on or off the job. What I do know for a fact because I have witnessed it, is David wearing a beanie cap on his head with a patch of the Confederate flag. I can only assume that all of the other employees working at the cemetery district have also witnessed the same,” former Tulare Public Cemetery District board member Alberto Aguilar stated in an email to the Voice.

In a Facebook post in the group Political Perspectives on the Tulare Cemetery, community member Mary Sepeda wrote a statement decrying the situation.

“Here is the lawsuit the cemetery lost. A $150,000.00 award to the plaintiff, plus additional cemetery costs for the cemetery attorneys, insurance investigators fees, court fees and the depositions done. Don’t forget the cemetery’s liability insurance will skyrocket! We can thank our District cemetery manager Clara Bernardo and foreman David Faria for this ridiculous lawsuit. In addition, David took off a month for stress leave to come back on December 1 to quit.$$$,” the post reads.

Bernardo told the Voice that the district’s insurer, Golden State Insurance, took on the cost of legal representation, legal expenses, and the cost of the settlement.

The settlement in its totality was $150,000, Bernardo said – and none of that was charged to the district. The district ended up paying nothing.

Sepeda’s concerns about higher insurance rates were not unfounded, however.

In September of 2021 the district’s former insurance company, Allied World, canceled their insurance policy early due to “the risks with bad publicity and risks involved with our past management,” Bernardo reported to the board.

TPCD struggled to find a replacement company before their insurance lapsed and ended up paying a much higher premium to Golden State.

Sepeda added to her post referring to the $150,000 settlement,  “The big question is: if the ground foreman was still on the job, would he now be fired? IF YES, why hasn’t the District cemetery manager been fired? She is an AT WILL employee. No need to place on the agenda in closed session. Why is Charlie, Michele, and Steve keeping her on the job?”

Complaints swirled around Bernardo soon after she was hired. Some patrons of the cemetery have claimed that Bernardo is overpaid, spends too much cemetery money on frivolous expenditures, and is not fit for the job.

Maloy says the cemetery’s budget has ballooned to $2m per year from just $840,000 four years ago. District board trustee Xavier Avila wrote in September 2023 that the budget was $1,862,000, and decried the state of the cemetery when compared with the amount budgeted.

“If we could do a good job four years ago with only 6 groundskeepers with older equipment then we should be able to do it today. We certainly do not need to add a fourth office person. The Board voted to put an expensive computer program in and I was told it would reduce the work load on the office because it processed the paperwork automatically. So now even though we have this new $65,000 program I’m being told we still need more people in the office. Well I’m not buying it . It’s only going to put more stress on our budget and I’m totally against raising costs onto our families to cover a already bloated budget,” he wrote.

Former Trustee Vicki Gilson wrote in a Letter to the Editor last year, “Besides appearing that someone is “cooking the books” the cemetery finances have never been so dire.”

Aguilar claims that monthly financials have not been submitted to the board since June even though Bernardo works alongside two office assistants and a paid accountant.

“In 2017 there was a manager and one office assistant and they never missed a month reporting the financials,” he told the Voice.