Twanda Bailey’s fight puts San Francisco — and the nation — on notice

by Tabari Morris

After the California Supreme Court ruled that a single use of the N-word can support a workplace-harassment claim, the former District Attorney’s Office investigator now faces a new and extraordinary turn: San Francisco’s entire Superior Court bench has recused itself, and an Alameda County judge will preside over the trial beginning Oct. 5.

“I’m hoping for victory because I think I deserve it,” Twanda Bailey says. “I was the one that was called a racial slur. I didn’t do anything, and they made me feel like I did something wrong.”

Twanda Bailey’s workplace discrimination case is headed back toward trial in San Francisco Superior Court after a unanimous California Supreme Court decision reshaped state law — and after more than a decade in which Bailey says the City and County of San Francisco treated her report of being called the N-word as if she were the problem.

The consequences of this case reach far beyond one office: It establishes that an isolated act of harassment can be unlawful when it is severe enough, including a coworker’s use of the N-word, and it raises a plain question for every employer from San Francisco to the rest of the world: What happens when a Black worker reports racial violence in the workplace and the institution charged with justice refuses to act?

Her hope, she said, is larger than her own remedy. “I’m hoping they won’t go through what I went through. I’m hoping my case would definitely change the way the city deals with African American workers, because we are treated different.”

Bailey worked a little more than 14 years as an investigator in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. Her attorney, Daniel Bacon, said the incident began in January 2015, when a coworker told Bailey that a mouse had run toward her desk. Bailey reacted to the mouse; Bacon said the coworker then walked by and said, “You niggers is so scary.” Bailey, he said, was stunned because the two had worked together for years.

The next day, the incident was discussed with other coworkers at a holiday gathering, and a supervisor said she would report it, Bacon said. Bailey believed the report would lead to action. Instead, she says she encountered a system that did not protect her or even reliably document what she had reported. She later met with administrators in the District Attorney’s Office, and Bacon said a manager’s deposition testimony indicated the coworker did not squarely deny making the statement at the time. “There was no real denial,” Bacon said. “That didn’t happen until the lawyers got involved.”

By March, Bailey asked the office’s human-resources manager for a copy of her complaint. “There is no complaint,” Bacon recalled the manager telling her. He said Bailey was warned that, because she had spoken to other people about what happened, she could be accused of creating a hostile work environment for the coworker who had used the slur. Bailey and the coworker were not immediately separated. “They kept them working together. There was no separation,” Bacon said.

Bailey then filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The San Francisco Police Department later contacted City HR after Bailey told a police-department attorney about the incident and about the treatment she said followed. Yet in a July 22, 2015, letter described by Bacon, City HR informed Bailey that her allegations were insufficient to support an inference of harassment, hostile work environment or retaliation, and that her complaint would not be investigated. “So basically the city takes the position that being called the N-word was not harassment,” Bacon said.

That position is at the heart of Bailey’s long legal fight. Her case was dismissed in trial court and the dismissal was upheld on appeal. In 2024, however, the California Supreme Court unanimously reversed. The court held that “an isolated act of harassment may be actionable if it is sufficiently severe in light of the totality of the circumstances” and that a coworker’s use of “an unambiguous racial epithet such as the N-word may be found to suffice.” Justice Kelli Evans wrote that the slur carries “the stinging barbs of history, which catch and tear the psyche the way thorns tear at skin.”

For workers who had previously heard that one single event was not sufficient for a claim, the decision has turned the tables on their heads. “For years, racial harassment, sexual harassment, a lot of times employers would take the position, ‘Well, it’s not severe and pervasive,’” Bacon said. “The Supreme Court’s decision makes it clear … it’s not a matter of how many times you use the slur.” He said the decision requires employers to examine the totality of the circumstances, not hide behind a numerical threshold while a worker absorbs the harm.

Bacon said the legal question now is also about what the employer did after receiving notice. Where harassment is committed by a coworker rather than a supervisor, he said, an employer’s defense depends on proving it took immediate corrective action. “If they didn’t investigate it, didn’t consider it harassment, how could they have taken action to tell [the coworker], ‘Hey, look, that’s harassment. You can’t use it. And if you use it again, you can be disciplined up to termination’?” Bacon asked. He said the only measure taken was to have the coworker acknowledge receipt of an anti-harassment policy.

The City’s public position after the Supreme Court ruling, as recounted by Bacon from a press statement, was that San Francisco does not condone or tolerate the language at issue and took immediate corrective action. Bacon disputes that account. “Even though they lost, they claimed the city did corrective action when the facts are going to show they did the opposite,” he said. The City’s response to the current allegations and evidence will be tested in court; the claims described here remain allegations Bailey is pursuing against the City.

Bailey says the institutional response changed the course of her life. Bacon said she sought psychiatric care, went on leave in 2018 and tried unsuccessfully to secure a job outside the District Attorney’s Office. He said her psychiatrist later medically separated her from city employment, and that Bailey’s disability-retirement application was delayed for years before a hearing found her disabled. Bailey’s Social Security disability claim was also approved, he said. The City, Bacon said, has continued to contest the extent of harm and liability.

Her case also arrives in a city with a well-documented history of Black municipal workers describing unequal treatment. Bacon recalled three days of San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearings in 2018 where African American city employees came forward with their stories. Bailey testified at those hearings, he said. “Three days of all these stories of African American workers, but nothing changed,” he said. Bailey added that people from other communities spoke in support of Black workers, saying they had witnessed the different treatment.

That is why Bailey’s case matters to SF Bay View readers: It is not only a fight over a word or one employee’s claim. It is a test of whether a public institution that prosecutes wrongdoing will recognize racial harm inside its own walls; whether Black workers can report discrimination without being isolated, threatened or disbelieved; and whether a Supreme Court victory becomes lived protection rather than another principle kept on paper. It is also a warning to employers everywhere that they cannot excuse a slur’s violence by calling it a one-time event.

“I hope that employers take from that, that it creates a working environment, especially for African Americans, where they don’t have to be subjected to that slur,” Bacon said. “And if it happens, they should be disciplined appropriately instead of being protected like the city has done here.” Bailey’s persistence has already set a statewide legal precedent. What happens next in San Francisco can set the stage for whether that precedent reaches every job site where workers are still being asked to endure what should never be tolerated.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated following interviews with Twanda Bailey and her attorney Daniel Bacon, along with an update provided by Brenda McGann with the document which states that the entire San Francisco Superior Court bench stepped down from the case, Judge Rebekah Evenson of the Alameda Superior Court was appointed, and the hearing is scheduled for Oct. 5. The update provided by Ms. McGann does not explain the reason behind this recusal. The City and County of San Francisco had not provided their version of the events by print time.

Tabari Morris is Managing Editor at the San Francisco Bay View as well as an investigative journalist. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Source: https://sfbayview.com/2026/09/twanda-bailey-s-fight-puts-san-francisco-and-the-nation-on-notice/