While most employees can seek redress in court for workplace harassment claims, those who work for the federal judiciary must instead use an administrative process that many say is deeply flawed.

RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — A Fourth Circuit hearing Wednesday shined a light on a lack of legal recourse for employees of the federal court system who have been harassed or discriminated against.

The hearing, held remotely by the Richmond-based appeals court, centered on a March 2020 complaint filed by Jane Roe, a pseudonym for a former federal public defender in the Western District of North Carolina. According to the lawsuit filed in Asheville federal court, Roe had long dreamed of becoming a public defender, but after she accepted the job she quickly discovered a workplace culture of “bullying, sexism, homophobia, racism, and mockery of disabilities was normalized.”

She tried to look beyond these problems and advance her career, accepting a mentorship program with an unnamed first assistant federal defender. But that opportunity would soon become the subject of her own harassment complaint, she claims, with unwanted sexual advances and harassment from her boss.

She says she hit roadblocks as soon as she tried to complain about the alleged abuse. Her lawsuit details how efforts to report the issues to higher-ups were often dismissed. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she sought an internal review process only to be told “the cards were ‘stacked’” against her and “it might be less...

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