Franklin County judge files racism, harassment complaint

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Federal labor investigators are being asked to look into the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas for alleged racism and harassment.

The claims are shocking, but even more shocking is the person making them is a Franklin County judge.

Judge Kimberly Cocroft has been on the bench for 15 years and was reelected last November. The 17-judge Common Pleas Court is the largest in the state and has legal authority over all felony criminal cases and major civil complaints in Franklin County.

Cocroft said it is a toxic work environment.

“And they said that they had heard from a lot of different people that I was unapproachable, that I wasn't friendly, that I didn't talk to people, that I was a little aggressive, all of these negative kind of stereotypical things that you hear about Black women,” Cocroft said.

Cocroft said she heard those complaints from two other Common Pleas Court judges in December 2021, just weeks before she became the first woman to take the oversight role of administrative judge.

As detailed in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the white, male judges gave Cocroft a list of Black women asking if she had ever heard of Joyce Beatty, Yvette McGee Brown, Laurel Beatty Blunt, telling her, “You need to more like them.”

“I could not come to your offices and give you a list of white men whom you should be more like,” Cocroft said.

Cocroft said it was the beginning of a pattern of discrimination based on race and gender, of a hostile work environment, and retaliation.

“I have been subjected to discrimination based on race and gender and a hostile work environment, and retaliation,” she wrote in the complaint.

Cocroft said that in meetings, some court reporters were rude and condescending; she alleges that her personnel decisions were questioned and that she could not get court staffers to train her new employees, especially on technology, making it impossible for them to do their jobs.

In a meeting, Cocroft said a white male judge made comments about women that were inappropriate and insensitive.

Cocroft was also the target of a complaint filed by the court administrator who claims that over a period of months, she was “harassed, demeaned, belittled, constantly criticized, and undermined” by Cocroft.

Crocroft is accused of creating a stressful work environment and having a history of being displeased with staff members, causing many of them to resign, unable to meet her unreasonable expectations.

Cocroft said she was a year into her role as an administrative judge when another judge told her she was the target of that complaint.

“And she's lawyered up, so this is really serious,” Cocroft said of the complaint against her. “And I said, ‘Well, have you reviewed it?’ And he said, ‘Well, I really haven't looked at it, but I know it's really serious.’”

Cocroft said the other judge told her the complaint would go away if she resigned her position as administrative judge. She refused and asked for a private meeting with that judge and the administrator.

Instead, she said she was shocked that a meeting was called with all of the judges.

“And I participated and to hear the kinds of things that the judges had to say, to me, about me, with me sitting in this meeting, it was just, again, surreal,” Cocroft said. “That I needed to grow up, I needed to act like an adult, I had a snowflake mentality, investigating would be a waste of taxpayer money.”

Cocroft believes the judges would remove her as administrative judge, a position they elected her to, unless she resigned, so she did.

However, she said the discrimination, the mistreatment of her staff, and the harassment continue. Now, she is asking the EEOC to do what we confirmed the other judges did not: investigate her claims.

Current Administrative Judge Kimberly Brown and several other judges all declined to comment because of the EEOC investigation and the possibility of litigation.