Photo by John Anderson
The city of Austin appears ready to mount a vigorous – or at least costly – defense in a workplace harassment lawsuit brought by former Austin Police Officer Samantha Liedtke.
At the City Council meeting today, Aug. 29, the city’s Law Department is asking Council members to approve a contract with law firm Schmoyer Reinhard, LLP that could run between $293,000 and $367,000 – just to work on the Liedtke case. That’s in addition to the $60,724 the city has already paid the firm to defend the case. The contract is paid for out of the city’s Liability Reserve Fund, which itself is funded each fiscal year through contributions from city departments based on how much they drew from the liability fund in the previous fiscal year.
But, in a letter sent to the city on Aug. 28, Liedtke’s attorneys have proposed a new settlement offer. Rather than spend that money on an outside law firm to defend the case, pay it to Liedtke and – more importantly to Liedtke’s cause, the attorneys say – commit to “meaningful steps” that would address a range of the issues she experienced as an officer. (Initially, Liedtke’s attorneys were pushing for a settlement that would include a $1.45 million payment in addition to reforms.)
The reforms Liedtke seeks include teaching all officers a sexual assault victims advocate curriculum developed by SAFE Aliance, the respected domestic violence nonprofit; developing more rigorous standards around how officers report racial profiling data; preventing officers from abusing dispatch codes to avoid 911 calls, which she alleges happened during her time at APD; and requiring officers train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to better equip them to de-escalate encounters without resorting to potentially lethal force.
“Samm [Liedtke] is willing to settle at a steep discount because her goal was always that APD simply do better,” said Rebecca Webber, one of Liedke’s attorneys.
Liedtke filed the lawsuit in July of 2023, about two years after she resigned from the Austin Police Department due to the harassment, discrimination, and retaliation she alleges to have experienced in the roughly two years she worked as a patrol officer. In one particularly chilling episode, detailed in the suit, Liedtke alleges that two of her male colleagues asked her to provide backup on a call but when she arrived, they “berated, threatened, and intimidated her” for a comment she made earlier chiding them for not working while on-duty.
“[Liedtke’s] male colleagues and supervisors discriminated against her,” the suit reads, “including harassment, subjecting her to a hostile work environment, and retaliation.” Taken together, the suit argues, Liedtke suffered “humiliation, degradation, emotional distress, other consequential damages including lost wages and loss of earning capacity.”
When asked about the proposed increase to the Schmoyer Reinhard contract, a city spokesperson said that most lawsuits brought against the city are defended in-house, but sometimes they “hire outside representation in an effort to manage the volume and complexities of lawsuits brought against the City, its officials, and employees.”
In the letter, Liedtke’s attorneys ask that the city respond to their new offer by Sept. 13.