A former San Francisco District Attorney’s staffer who lost his job over a “reply-all” email sent to his boss asking, “What color panties you have on,” claims the embarrassing message was sent by accident in a new lawsuit he filed against the city.
Jovan Thomas, 56, filed the complaint on Friday, six months after San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins and her employees opened their mailboxes to find the risqué reply from the trained victim advocate in response to an email from the city’s top prosecutor to staff, Mercury News reported.
Jenkins’ office slammed the email as “misogynistic behavior” and Thomas, who has been previously accused of sexual harassment, was canned after an internal review.
In his filing to the Superior Court, Thomas claimed the email was meant to be sent to a longtime friend whose father had recently died, with the former staffer saying it was just a “goofy, playful” joke to try and cheer up his male buddy.
“[The] text to his friend was a whimsical question that was part of plaintiffs standard jocular repertoire with his friend,” Thomas lawyers wrote in the filing.
“In the context of their long-time friendship, plaintiff’s flip question had no sexual, off-color, obscene, misogynistic or sexist meaning or intent,” they added.
“Rather, it was a goofy, non-sequitur by one long-time friend to another friend intended to try to divert and cheer him up while he was going through a difficult and upsetting experience.”
Thomas is ultimately suing the city for invasion of privacy, defamation and infliction of severe emotional distress.
He is seeking a jury trial and compensatory and punitive damages as a result of his firing.
In the fallout of his firing, it was revealed that a Jane Doe had filed a lawsuit against Thomas in 2018 for allegedly sexually harassing her while working on a case involving her and her son.
The woman claimed Thomas stroked her butt and made sexual advances at her, with the Jane Doe complying because she was worried she wouldn’t get victim’s services if she turned him down, the San Francisco Standard reported.
The victim agreed to drop Thomas from her case against the city in 2019, with representatives for the city filing a motion to dismiss the case in 2021 because Thomas’ alleged conduct “was not in the course and scope of his employment.”
A judge agreed and dismissed the case in December of that year.