Court Finds Intentional Sex Bias in Sheriff’s Department : Law enforcement: The agency failed to promote women to sergeant even though there were vacancies, the appellate panel rules. A lawyer estimates that damages could exceed $2 million.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had engaged in intentional sex discrimination by failing to promote women to sergeant even though vacancies were available.

As a result, hundreds of women sheriff’s deputies who were passed over for promotion are eligible for damages because they were subjected to discrimination, according to Dennis Harley, a Pasadena lawyer who represented the women in the lawsuit. He estimated that the total damages could exceed $2 million.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 1988 decision by a federal judge in Los Angeles that the Sheriff’s Department had unfair promotion policies, including tests that had a negative effect on women applicants.

At that time, Judge Robert M. Takasugi issued an injunction directing the Sheriff’s Department not to promote any more deputies to sergeant until it instituted more equitable promotion procedures.

The judge enjoined sheriff’s officers from using a selection procedure that “excludes females disproportionately.”

He ordered the department not to “prepare, administer, design, draft or use promotional examinations” for any promotions to the rank of sergeant until a court-approved procedure was devised that “complies fully” with federal equal employment opportunity laws.

But the department has failed to change its promotion policies, and as a consequence the department is short 125 sergeants, according to documents submitted to Takasugi by the Sheriff’s Department.

“They’ve fought, resisted, dragged it out,” said Harley. “The ball is in their court. They haven’t submitted anything to the court,” he added.

As of this month, 862 of the department’s 6,322 deputies were women, or 13.6%, according to a report the department submitted to Takasugi. The same report states that 86 of the department’s 942 sergeants--9.1%--are women.

The suit was filed as a class action in 1980 by Susan Bouman, who joined the department in 1971, near the end of the era when women deputies spent their entire careers as jail matrons.

She became part of a pilot program in 1975 that put women deputies into the field. After garnering high ratings, Bouman took the three part-examination for sergeant. After learning that she placed 128th out of 250, she complained.

When the department promoted everyone ahead of her on the list and then cut off the list, Bouman grew more suspicious. Bouman filed her suit after first appealing through departmental channels and, failing that, writing to several government agencies, including the county Civil Service Commission.

Although Bouman was awarded $51,764 in compensatory damages and $106,523 in punitive damages in 1988, she has yet to collect any money because the county’s appeal of Judge Takasugi’s decision was pending.

Tuesday, Bouman said she was ecstatic upon learning of the unanimous appeals court decision, which was written by Circuit Judge Dorothy W. Nelson. Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt and District Judge James R. Singleton, sitting by designation, joined in the opinion.

Bouman, 43, said that after she filed her original complaint in 1978, she was kicked out of her patrol job and sent back to work at the women’s jail where she lingered for five years.

During that period, in 1981, she was promoted to sergeant and some thought she would drop the lawsuit. But Bouman decided to persist.

“It’s been so long and I am finally vindicated, but it’s not over,” she said in an interview Tuesday. Still, she said she would not be surprised if the Sheriff’s Department takes the case to the Supreme Court.

Bouman, a Whittier resident, said she was given a stress disability retirement by the Sheriff’s Department in January, 1990. She said there was no doubt that her tenacious pursuit of her case was a cause of her problems.

“I used to get outstanding evaluations until I filed this lawsuit,” she said. “Afterward, it was like I couldn’t walk and talk.”

Bouman said she was scorned by many of her fellow officers and subjected to various kinds of harassment. “I had people putting all kinds of things in my mailbox--transfer requests, dildoes, condoms, porno pictures. Real sweethearts, those people.”

She said that since she filed the suit the Sheriff’s Department had grudgingly expanded opportunities for women. The department now has two women commanders and five women captains.

Sgt. Robert Stoneman, a department spokesman, said that Sheriff Sherman Block was reviewing the opinion but would not issue a statement Tuesday. Alan N. Terakawa, the deputy county counsel who handled the case for the department, also declined comment.