Justly Prudent files race discrimination lawsuit against Prince George's County on behalf of Latina paralegal

On March 10, 2026, Justly Prudent filed a race discrimination lawsuit in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County, Maryland, on behalf of Sofia Franco, a Latina Paralegal Supervisor who says she was subjected to more than two years of racial harassment, institutional indifference, and escalating retaliation after she reported her supervisor's discriminatory conduct.

Ms. Franco joined Prince George's County Government in January 2023 as a Paralegal Supervisor within the Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement. She was the only Hispanic employee in her section. According to the complaint, what began as a promising career in public service quickly became a nightmare when her supervisor, Michelle Lyons, began targeting her because of her race and national origin.

The complaint describes specific incidents of racial hostility that are difficult to dismiss. During a phone call in January 2024, Lyons reportedly called Ms. Franco "the new Spanish bitch on the 5th floor" who was "trying to get all the Black people fired." In the months that followed, Lyons allegedly made repeated references to ICE raids and immigration enforcement in Ms. Franco's presence, told her that her "cleaning lady got deported because she's Latina," and warned Ms. Franco to "be careful." In September 2025, according to the complaint, Lyons claimed to have connections to the Director of Homeland Security through her nonprofit organization and told Ms. Franco she "could get whatever she wanted," a statement Ms. Franco understood as an implied threat given the pattern of immigration-related comments directed at her.

The harassment was not limited to words. The complaint details a systematic effort to strip Ms. Franco of her professional responsibilities while allowing a non-Hispanic coworker, who held a lower-level administrative position and had no paralegal training, to assume duties beyond his job classification without restriction. Lyons reportedly revoked Ms. Franco's access to the county's mobile timekeeping system on the same day Ms. Franco emailed the Office of Human Resources Management to report the discrimination—while allowing her coworker to keep full access. The complaint says Lyons barred Ms. Franco from communicating with the Office of Law, removed her from the overtime volunteer list, and threatened to eliminate her position entirely.

Every time Ms. Franco sought help, the complaint says, the system failed her. She reported the discrimination to at least four different officials across multiple levels of county government. HR Supervisor Thelia Jones allegedly told her that filing a formal complaint would "go up to OHRM and then get lost." Associate Director Eric Ampedu reportedly promised investigations on four separate occasions and never followed through. When Ms. Franco finally filed a formal EEO complaint with the county's Office of Human Resources Management in December 2025, the county's own EEO investigator reportedly made discriminatory jokes about ICE coming for Ms. Franco and made racially stereotyping comments about Lyons.

The retaliation that followed the formal complaint was swift. According to the complaint, less than one month after Ms. Franco filed her EEO complaint, the county issued an involuntary transfer letter moving her out of her paralegal role and into a unit that reviews construction applications—work entirely outside her training and expertise. Lyons reportedly moved Ms. Franco's belongings to the new location without her knowledge and told employees in the new department that Ms. Franco was "lazy" and "needed to be watched." The county then drafted a new position description that kept Ms. Franco's title intact while stripping out every substantive paralegal function, a move Ms. Franco's new supervisor acknowledged was done at HR's direction to obscure the demotion.

"No one should have to choose between their dignity and their paycheck," said Managing Attorney Jordan D. Howlette. "Ms. Franco did everything right. She reported the harassment through every channel available to her, and every channel failed. This lawsuit is about holding Prince George's County accountable for a culture that allowed a supervisor to terrorize an employee because of her ethnicity and then punished that employee for speaking up."

The lawsuit brings fifteen counts under federal, state, and local civil rights laws, including race-based hostile work environment, discrimination, and retaliation claims under, among other statutes, Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act, and the Prince George's County Human Rights Act. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages, reinstatement to Ms. Franco's prior paralegal duties, restoration of workplace system access, and sweeping institutional reforms including mandatory anti-discrimination training and the elimination of the confidentiality agreement the county required Ms. Franco to sign as a condition of filing her EEO complaint.

The case is Sofia Franco v. Prince George's County, Maryland, et al., filed in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County, Maryland (Case No. C-16-CV-26-001360).