State pays ex-worker $15K in suit
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services paid $15,000 to settle a lawsuit with an ex-official claiming top brass demoted him when he was wrongfully accused of sexual harassment and racism just after he revealed that his co-workers were allegedly padding their pay.
Former Houston-based program administrator Jon Chapman initially filed the federal suit back in August 2018, months after he uncovered “widespread overtime pay fraud and abuse by DFPS employees,” according to the court filings. Following his discovery, Chapman claimed, another agency worker penned a defamatory letter that led to his demotion.
He’s since left the agency, but his Houston-based lawyer celebrated the outcome of the case.
“Jon Chapman is a great law enforcement official and a great person,” said attorney Ahad Khan. “We are glad that this matter was resolved.”
In the years before the lawsuit, Chapman worked as a special investigations program administrator, a high-ranking official in the part of the agency made up of former law enforcement officers who assist on the most serious
cases of child abuse and neglect.
Then in 2017, according to the lawsuit, he “played a pivotal role” in a whistleblowing effort. The filings don’t clarify what that entailed or how he stumbled across it, but in an interview Chapman told the Houston Chronicle that it started after officials asked him to figure out why special investigators were claiming so much overtime.
Chapman said he identified a couple dozen special investigations employees in the Houston area who were allegedly padding their time cards with unearned overtime.
“Their standard operating
practice was if they call you after hours for five minutes,” he said, “you charge two hours of overtime.”
His findings, according to the legal claim, “upset several DFPS employees who were no longer able to over-inflate their overtime hours for extra pay.”
Then in the end of 2017, another agency employee wrote to Gov. Greg Abbott and then-Commissioner Hank Whitman, accusing Chapman of sexual harassment and racism and demanding an investigation. But Chapman claimed officials only did a cursory investigation and never bothered interviewing him before they demoted him to special investigator in January 2018.
“The current climate of holding men accountable when it comes to workplace sexual harassment influenced Mr. Chapman’s discipline instead of the actual facts of the matter,” the lawsuit claimed. “Mr. Chapman’s race and gender also factored into the underwhelming and incomplete investigation that he was the target of.”
In court filings last year, the agency admitted that Chapman hadn’t been interviewed and that he had been demoted, but denied most of his other claims.
“Any alleged actions taken against Plaintiff were based on neutral, nondiscriminatory, non-retaliatory practices,” state attorneys wrote, adding that the agency “acted in good faith and without malice, willfulness, or intent.”
Nonetheless, in April the two sides agreed to a settlement, with a payout totaling $15,000, according to records obtained last month by the Houston Chronicle. An agency spokesman didn’t offer any comment on what prompted the change of course.