A federal court has ruled that TaShun Bowden-Lewis, the state’s first Black chief public defender, can continue to press a federal civil rights suit in which she claims the commission that oversaw her office discriminated against her because of her race and then fired her for complaining about it.
U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden denied a motion to dismiss the suit by the 6-member Public Defender Services Commission, which fired Bowden-Lewis in June 2024 after her tumultuous two years in office.
The commission justified the termination in a 110-page report that detailed more than a dozen examples of misconduct, including the findings of a forensic computer examination that showed Bowden-Lewis improperly accessed privileged email correspondence between the commission chairman and division’s legal counsel.
Former Connecticut Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis
In her suit, she claims she was treated differently than previous chief public defenders, who were white, and that she was terminated because of her repeated complaints that she was being discriminated against.
Bolden said he ruled against the state’s motion to dismiss after considering Bowden-Lewis’s allegations in a light most favorable to her.
“When reviewing a complaint … the court takes all factual allegations in the complaint as true,” Bolden wrote. “The court also views the allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and draws all inferences in the plaintiff’s favor.”
With Bolden’s decision to allow the suit to proceed, both sides will begin to produce evidence to support their respective claims, a process that could continue for years. Bowden-Lewis is represented by Bridgeport attorney Thomas Bucci and Attorney General William Tong’s office is defending the commission.
The suit casts events since Bowden-Lewis’s appointment in 2022 in stark racial terms. It recounts several of her confrontations with the commission — over hiring, spending and hacking email — and asserts that all demonstrate how she is the victim of discrimination.
She asserts that the commission treated her complaints of its racial bias as “acts of workplace misconduct” and that the commission members hid “behind the veil of the Connecticut Public Defender Services Commission” and “publically castigated and rebuked (her) for voicing her good faith belief that she was being treated in a racially discriminatory manner.”
In explaining its decision to fire Bowden-Lewis, the commissioner referred to a report by an outside investigator who concluded that she seemed preoccupied with racial issues and that preoccupation had a chilling effect on discussion across the public defender service during her tenure at the Office of Chief Public Defender or OCPD. Bolden excerpted the report in his decision:
“Further, while perhaps legitimate in certain instances, the sheer number of instances in which Ms. Bowden-Lewis has used race-based comments to insinuate or outright state that other employees or members of the Commission are racist based on their legitimate disagreements with her management of OCPD could be classified as bullying, and has contributed to an environment within OCPD where employees are fearful to raise any issues regarding her leadership, lest they be labeled racists.”
Bolden said in his decision to allow the suit to proceed,that the plausibility of allegations of discrimination and retribution may be better measured after the production of evidence “following discovery and at the summary judgment stage.”
