A former New York City Board of Elections lawyer — whose complaint alleging Executive Director Michael Ryan subjected her to repeated comments about her ethnicity and gender spurred a city probe — asked a judge on Thursday to let her file suit.
Stephanie Jaquez formally petitioned in Manhattan state Supreme Court for permission to proceed with a case after waiting for the city Department of Investigation to complete its probe of her complaint.
That investigation, first revealed by THE CITY earlier this week and also involving a set of allegations from a second employee, led to a recommendation from DOI that the politically appointed Board of Elections terminate Ryan’s employment if he did not resign first. The board instead suspended him for 15 days.
The DOI report found Ryan had pointed to Vaseline on Jaquez’ desk, saying “Oh rosy lips,” while making a puckering sound and attempting to touch her face. In another instance, he asked a male colleague “how young is too young” for a woman to date an older man.
Jaquez alleged in a sworn statement on Thursday that a “general lack of seriousness or interest that the BOE leadership was taking regarding my substantiated claims” and described a situation with no way out except to resign.
She said that she did not believe Ryan necessarily intended to be cruel, “but rather that he was an unserious person who lacked self-awareness about the tremendously negative impact his inappropriate behavior had on me.”
Jaquez said she reported Ryan’s conduct to Board of Elections General Counsel Hemalee Patel as well as two of the board’s commissioners, Rodney Pepe-Souvenir and Jodi Morales, in July 2024.
Jaquez was given several options, her statement recounts, adding that she believed none would have shielded her from possible blowback from Ryan.
She was told she could report the harassment to Ryan himself, to the operations manager who reports to Ryan, or file a complaint with an outside agency like the city’s human rights commission, a complaint that would eventually be kicked back to Ryan.
“All these options for reporting presented were untenable,” Jaquez wrote in her affidavit. “There was truly no option that did not involve ED Ryan being in the chain of reporting.”
She herself or members of her team typically handled Board of Elections discrimination complaints, she noted.
Jaquez resigned five days later, after which Ryan tried to call her and then sent his assistant to find her, she alleged in her court filing.
“I felt that I couldn’t escape ED Ryan no matter what I did,” she wrote. “I fled to the bathroom and had a panic attack,” adding Ryan’s conduct caused her “constant distress, worry, and anxiety.”
In Thursday’s filing Jaquez asked a judge to waive the 90-day window after an incident when someone hoping to sue the city must notify the comptroller’s office, because she’d made formal complaints with both the Board of Elections and the Department of Investigation, with DOI asking her not to describe the allegations publicly while they investigated.
Spokespersons for DOI and the Board of Elections didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon.
In a statement on Wednesday, Pepe Souvenir and Board Secretary Frederic Umane said that by referring the case to DOI, “We sent a strong message that these types of unwelcomed and insensitive comments will not be tolerated by anyone at the BOE.”
In his own statement on Wednesday, Ryan said: “I want to express my deepest apologies to my family, my colleagues and to anyone I unintentionally offended,” adding that he disputes the allegations made in the report.
Jaquez told THE CITY on Friday that she was dismayed by both the BOE’s handling of the situation and Ryan’s response.
“Not only is Mr. Ryan the head of an agency tasked with protecting the election integrity, he is also an attorney and a mandated reporter as it relates to corruption,” she said. “He does not need to be more sensitive. He needs to follow the law.”
The new documents offer another window into an embattled agency that’s long been lamented as one of the city’s last bastions of patronage, where virtually every position is hand-picked by party bosses.
Instead of firing Ryan as the DOI report recommended, the Board of Elections put him on probation and ordered him to take sensitivity training in addition to the three-week suspension.
That outcome shocked Jaquez, who said in her court statement that she was “insulted and distressed,” and pointing out Ryan had already been required to take sensitivity training each year. She added that she had witnessed Ryan mocking those very same trainings in the past.
“On more than one occasion, I heard ED Ryan openly make jokes about the sensitivity training,” the affidavit reads. “He also commented to me that he was bothered by the number of gay employees referenced in the training and suggested that it was evidence that heterosexuals were being discriminated against.”
