Lindamood obtained pay records directly from the State Attorney’s Office and the Justice Administrative Commission, and she alleged gender bias in 9^th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Lawson Lamar’s office. This alleged gender bias is reflected in hiring, promotions, and workload records she had also obtained during the course of her employment there. Lindamood alleged salary inequities between comparable male and female attorneys that exceeded 1/4 million dollars during Lamar’s then three terms as State Attorney, despite a mandate under Florida Statute 27.182 requiring State Attorneys and Public Defenders to conduct annual audits to eliminate gender bias. These records were summarized in a chart that was introduced in the federal trial. (see the website, http://www.lawsonlamar.com)

Lindamood made a complaint (that constitutes a Public Record) of various abuses to the Auditor General of Florida after the pay records she obtained appeared to show that two high ranking administrators in Lamar’s office were given special risk retirement status, reserved for those performing high risk duties such as police officers and firefighters, or those who directly supervise them to which she did not believe them to be entitled, and her discovery that the Executive Director was making a salary in excess of that allowed by statute. Lindamood also reported the absence of performance evaluations for Senior Management Service personnel and the abuse of government owned vehicles to the Auditor General. That office issued Report # 13039, dated August 7, 1997, finding that 6 of 10 vehicles audited "did not document the official purpose and destination of travel for each use of the vehicles" and that certain logs showed vehicle usage by assigned individuals when these individuals were on vacation or were suspended from duty without pay, but no action was taken on her other complaints.

Lindamood reported salary inequities to the late Governor Lawton Chiles and members of the state legislature. The Governor has the authority to conduct investigations and suspend or remove public officials from office for misfeasance, malfeasance, or criminal conduct. Governor Chiles, in a letter to Lindamood, concluded the salaries were "management prerogative." When she forwarded documents to him in August 1996 alleging gender bias in salaries at other state attorney offices in Florida (based on records obtained from the Justice Administrative Commission), his letter to Lindamood indicated he forwarded them without action to State Attorney Bernard McCabe, 6^th Judicial Circuit, Pinellas County. McCabe was then President of the Florida Prosecuting Attorney’s Association. Lamar was the Vice President. Lindamood heard nothing further.

Lindamood filed complaint of gender bias with the EEOC in September 1995. Records she obtained through her employer showed she performed more Intake case reviews, yet received fewer and smaller pay raises than her male counterpart. In September 1997, the Florida’s Attorney General filed a response to the EEOC on Lamar's behalf. The EEOC investigator copied Lindamood on the pay records they produced, dated September 27, 1997. Lindamood alleged that these records showed discrimination on their face. She alleged specific instances of pay inequities between male and female attorneys she knew to be comparable to the investigator. Barely three months later she was fired.

Lamar has been sued before for discrimination (Whitener v. State Attorney’s Office, 96-591-Civ-Orl-19) and was represented by private counsel (he entered an out of court settlement). Whitener was fired, four days before Christmas in 1995, for allegedly falsifying her handwritten time sheet (they had no time clocks). Misconduct is a bar to receipt of unemployment compensation. Whitener was denied unemployment compensation for "misconduct." The time in controversy was less than five minutes. At a hearing, the state attorney's office failed to prove their allegation of misconduct and the unemployment appeals referee noted the office's failure to follow their own policies and procedures manual with regard to Whitener's termination, allowing Whitener the belated receipt of unemployment compensation benefits.

The Fifth District Court opinion noted that the office failed to follow its own progressive step discipline with her termination. Several months after her termination the State Attorney's office alleged her termination was caused by a disrespectful email. They did not contest her application for unemployment compensation, nor did they respond to the Whistle Blower investigation by the Office of the Public Counsel by providing a reason for her termination, other than that she "no longer served at the pleasure of the State Attorney." At the time of her termination, she was also told only that she"no longer served at the pleasure of the State Attorney."

In February of 1999, Lindamood wrote the office of newly elected Governor Jeb Bush with allegations of gender bias at the state attorney's office. She received a letter in reply that "this Office can neither intervene nor interfere with your pending litigation." To view a copy of the letter, CLICK HERE.

Attorney General Bob Butterworth, whose office defended Lamar in the suit Lindamood brought in federal court, also periodically fought bias allegations within his office. See Tampa Tribune capitol correspondent, Michelle Pellemans, articles dated June 2, June 16, August 3, and August 19, 1998 concerning 3 former Assistant Attorney’s General suing Butterworth’s office for discrimination. Documents obtained from the Department of Insurance, Division of Risk Management, maintained for the last three years, show that five of Butterworth's plaintiffs received settlements ranging from $9,500 to $70,000. One plaintiff, receiving $57,000, was also awarded $115,000 in attorney's fees and costs.

Lindamood obtained payroll registers for 20 state attorney offices for what she believed to be representative months in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 , 1999 , 2000 , and 2001 . To the best of her ability, she projected annual salaries and prepared tables to indicate the distribution of males versus females over various pay ranges by judicial circuit. To find a summary of this data, click on the hypertext. At times it was difficult to know the gender of the ASA because of certain foreign names or names that were common to males and females. The Justice Administrative Commission responded to her last (2001) public records request with payroll registers that showed only the first and middle initials of the individuals. The records for the 6th Circuit show the size of the payroll increased dramatically-- she declined to use these figures as she questioned their reliability. These payroll register records are available to all citizens under Chapter 119, the Florida Public Records Act by contacting the Justice Administrative Commission at P.O. Box 1654, Tallahassee, Florida 32302, or by telephone at (850) 488-2415. The Executive Director, E. Frank Farrell, follows the JAC policy of notifying State Attorneys of inquiries by the public.

Lindamood brought suit in federal court for discrimination (98-457-Civ-Orl-19C), as well as in Circuit Court, Orange County (CI 98-4599) for retaliatory termination under the Whistle Blower Act, F. S. 112.31895. The Office of the Public Counsel (which investigates complaints of retaliation under F. S. 112.31895) issued a finding in April 1998 that she had been terminated in retaliation for protected disclosures, in violation of that statute. Her victory in the 5th District Court of Appeals is found at: Lindamood v. Office of the State Attorney, 731 So.2d 829 (Fla. 5th DCA 1999). her lawyer in that litigation was Edward Gay, 1516 E. Concord Street, Orlando, Florida 32803.

The trial in federal court in February 2000, before a visiting judge, resulted in a jury verdict for the defendant that was affirmed on appeal by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, in an unsigned, unpublished opinion found on the website at http://www.lawsonlamar.com. Lindamood's was one of over 7000 appeals filed with the United States Supreme Court last year. The Supreme Court accepts roughly 100 cases per year for review. her case was not one of them.

Because emails, which are public records subject to disclosure under the Florida Public Records Act, were an issue in the litigation and because the Orange County Court Administrator's office refused to produce the emails of Chief Assistant William Vose and a former supervisor, citing "technical difficulties," Lindamood was forced to bring suit in the Circuit Court, Orange County (CI 96-9029) against the Court Administrator who controlled these records. Lindamood was advised of these various "technical difficulties" that precluded her obtaining these records (including having moved the files, forgetting what they were called, losing the program to call them up, and the tape player to play back the tape on which they were stored) by Chief Assistant William Vose, whose emails she had sought through the Court Administration, a separate governmental entity. She ultimately obtained copies of the emails to use in the litigation, and was awarded $12,520.28 in court costs, expert and attorney fees in August 2001 by a Circuit Court Judge in Orange County against the Court Administrator. The suit was first brought in December 1996. The expert she ultimately used to extract the email records was an established vendor under contract to Orange County who had performed these extractions before.