By Chelsea Hadaway
chadaway@scbiznews.com
Published June 8, 2009

A former S.C. State University employee has filed a $600,000 lawsuit against the school claiming she was fired and mistreated after blowing the whistle on the alleged misuse of $2 million in federal money by school leaders.

Gail Hart Johnson, who was fired in February 2006, filed the lawsuit June 1 claiming emotional distress, slander and defamation, and deprivation of civil rights, among other charges.

Her lawsuit says she was discharged after she cooperated in an investigation of the university’s use of $2 million. Twelve people are named in the suit along with former university President Andrew Hugine, who was fired by the school’s board of trustees in 2007 and filed his own lawsuit against the university last year, claiming wrongful dismissal.

S.C. State University declined to comment on Johnson’s lawsuit when contacted by the Business Report.

Johnson said in the suit that she was subjected to harassment, intimidation, threats and the transfer of her office to an unsafe, remote neighborhood, all of which she attributed to her cooperation with the investigation. She also said she was discriminated against for her opposition of the university’s employment practices, which she says violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The lawsuit said Johnson pursued administrative remedies through writing to university authorities and filed with the S.C. Human Affairs Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. However, the university “refused all conciliatory efforts through and by EEOC.”

In the lawsuit, Johnson said she was demoted in July 2005 and involuntarily transferred by Hugine to an off-campus site in a high-crime area. She said that, in the same year, she was stopped and intimidated by campus police and taken to the campus police station.

Johnson has asked for a jury trial and at least $300,000 in actual damages and $300,000 in punitive damages. She’s currently living in North Carolina.