A 40-year veteran of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office faced cruel discrimination and retaliation at work while she cared for her ailing elderly parents, a new lawsuit claims.
Joan Davila, the demoted former head of the office’s crucial extradition office, suffered years of “caretaker discrimination, retaliation and harassment” — including the temporary revoking of her health-insurance coverage and being told to stop talking about her recently deceased dad, according to her suit and an exclusive interview with The Post.
When her official complaints were ignored, Davila tried to ask for help from higher-ups in the office, but everyone ignored her pleas, she said.
“There’s no empathy,” Davila said, calling the office she loved for nearly four decades now a “toxic environment.
“All this combined is because of the care of my parents,” she said of the alleged abuse she suffered.
Her lawyer, John Scola, added, “When the DA’s Office violates anti-discrimination laws, it betrays the very principles it is sworn to uphold — and it must be held accountable.”
Officials from the DA’s office did not respond to a Post request for comment.
The city’s Law Department declined to comment on the pending litigation, which was filed last week in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Davila grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and said she began her career at the DA’s office thanks to encouragement from her high-school guidance counselor in 1984.
Starting as a clerk, then becoming a paralegal, Davila eventually oversaw the DA’s extradition office — a complicated, high-stakes job that she loved.
But all of that went away once her parents — who moved to Florida when her dad retired after years of working in a jewelry and Christmas ornament factories in Brooklyn — were ill and needed care, she said.
Davila said the retaliation against her began in 2019 when she first used paid family leave to care for her parents, with her taking up to three months at a time. She said that when she returned to work, she was told she couldn’t get any more overtime, leading her to file a complaint with the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity.
Things escalated in early 2023 when she returned from a three-month paid family leave to find her extradition position given to an employee hired when she was gone, her suit claimed.
“I was coming back to nothing,” she told The Post. “I was devastated.”
She said it was “like if you remove an officer’s revolver and put him on desk duty. … I definitely loved what I did.”
She said she was offered a new role as head administrator for a trial bureau. But when her father needed her help with care again in 2024, her new supervisor began retaliating against her, she said.
Erratic deadlines and instructions were part of the retaliation, “like sabotage,” she said.
Soon, her overtime — which had been restored, although it was still just a couple of hours per pay period — was denied again.
“I felt like it was retaliation,” Davila said. “It’s happening all over again to me.”
Her suit claims that her supervisor, Siobhan Carty, explained the move to her by telling her, “I had to do your work while you were away.”
Davila said meetings with her union and the office’s chief operating officer went nowhere.
The worker said a message sent to DA Alvin Bragg explaining her situation didn’t move the needle, either.
“Not one of my OEEO complaints moved forward,” Davila said. “No one did absolutely anything.”
Davila said that in February, just days after she filed another complaint, Carty “stormed into my office,” where she proceeded “to rip into Plaintiff for taking leave,” the suit claimed.
Davila said she began to cry and mentioned that the leave was so she could care for her father, who died just a month earlier from dementia, diabetes and heart problems.
Davila’s mother had died the year before.
Carty said she “doesn’t not understand why you keep mentioning your father” and added that Davila is “probably just doing this to build a case” and accused her of recording the meeting, the suit claimed.
The meeting ended with the threat of a demotion, Davila alleged.
As the worker was then making doctors appointments for herself in March because of stress, she discovered that her health insurance was abruptly cancelled — and she missed two paychecks — allegedly in retaliation for her complaints, Davila said.
Despite her insurer telling her that only the DA’s office could cancel her coverage, the office denied they had done so, according to the suit.
It took nearly two weeks to reinstate coverage, the suit claimed.
Davila claims the retaliation has only gotten worse since — including denying her work-from-home requests and insisting she do tasks normally delegated to the paralegals and analysts working under her.
“Would this have happened under [former DA Robert] Morgenthau? Probably not,” Davila said. “The employees mattered for him.”
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