Sheriff McFadden settles sex discrimination lawsuit days before Charlotte trial
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden was supposed to go to trial to face civil allegations of sex discrimination and fabricating an incident report on Monday.
But on Friday, McFadden’s lawyer filed a document in Charlotte’s federal court: a notice of settlement.
The lawsuit was settled “with terms favorable” to Chandler Craig, the former detention officer who filed it in 2023, according to a statement from her lawyer. Craig claimed McFadden created a culture where “female employees have been treated far worse than male employees when facing same or similar allegations of wrongdoing in the workplace.”
McFadden discriminated against Craig, she said, when he fired her after she allegedly assaulted an inmate in 2021.
It was a “minor scrap,” but McFadden fabricated an incident report in retaliation, the lawsuit alleges. Craig, who started working for the sheriff’s office in 2015, said in the lawsuit that she had recently criticized McFadden for how he treated female employees.
McFadden paid Craig “an amount that exceeds her lost wages” and wiped her termination from her employee file, said Craig’s lawyer, M. Anthony Burts, in a statement Tuesday. She can now to “move forward without the stigma” of previously being fired, he said.
In the lawsuit, Craig accused McFadden of violating the workplace sex-discrimination ban included under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. She also called for court-ordered training throughout McFadden’s office to head off sex discrimination and retaliation.
Craig said she hopes the now-settled lawsuit will “prompt positive change for women in the workplace,” according to Burts’ statement.
McFadden’s office didn’t have immediate comment on the settlement.
A ‘minor scrap’
On Sept. 13, 2021, Craig was caught assaulting a handcuffed inmate on security camera footage, according to a 2021 news release from the sheriff’s office. She was fired a week later and charged with misdemeanor assault. That charge was later dismissed, Burts said.
She used a level of “physical force” that went beyond office policies and training, the sheriff’s office said at the time.
A sheriff’s press release also accused her of withholding relevant details of the incident from a report, but in her lawsuit, she said she wasn’t even allowed to see the report or give more details about the incident.
The inmate, who Craig had handcuffed, slammed into her and threatened to spit on her, she said in the lawsuit. Craig argued she was “placed in physical danger” and forced to defend herself.
According to the lawsuit, the inmate was not injured.
Craig claimed her case was just one in which McFadden disciplined female employees more harshly than male employees. She alleged in the lawsuit the sergeant who filed the report did not witness the incident and exaggerated what happened, under orders from McFadden.
Meanwhile, according to the lawsuit, a male jail corporal was not disciplined for sending an inmate to the hospital after striking him 85 times.
From 2020 to 2022, in the middle of the pandemic, dozens of deputies resigned and several male employees were fired, criminally charged, or both, according to previous Charlotte Observer reporting.
Craig’s 2021 firing happened in the middle of this time period, one now marked by lawsuits over inmate suicides and attacks on jailers.
Craig in the lawsuit asked McFadden to remedy her “emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment and anguish” with back pay and benefits and punitive and compensatory damages.
