Just as San Diego County appeared to turn the page on the 2023 sexual-assault scandal that drove Nathan Fletcher from public office, the region’s biggest municipal government is confronting a new legal claim over alleged behavior by the former Board of Supervisors chair.
A University of California San Diego professor says the county wrongly excluded her from a pair of contracts after she told a supervisor last April that an unidentified student had accused Fletcher of sexual harassment.
According to the claim, a legal document that must be filed and rejected before a civil lawsuit can be brought against a public agency, Juli Beth Hinds was directed to file a Title IX report indicating that the student had reported the harassment to her during an office-hours visit.
After she filed her report, Hinds said, the county and Fletcher retaliated by canceling her work on a pair of contracts related to the county’s decarbonization and water-equity plans.
“Claimant is informed and believes that the County of San Diego Board of Supervisors and Nathan Fletcher caused her harm and damages,” the claim says.
She is seeking some $280,000 in damages related to her lost income.
“UCSD thereafter had to reduce claimant’s hours and salary on the (regional decarbonization plan) contract so that another (urban studies) professor could facilitate the upcoming workshops,” states the claim, which is dated Oct. 23, 2023. “This reduced claimant’s pay effective Aug. 1, 2023.”
San Diego County spokesperson Michael Workman declined to comment on the claim, which was first reported by CBS 8.
A spokesperson for Fletcher issued a statement flatly denying the allegations, in part because he left the state for inpatient treatment in late March and formally resigned his county seat May 15.
“Nathan Fletcher has no idea what any of this is about, has not harassed anyone, couldn’t have retaliated against someone he didn’t know existed and couldn’t have impacted a county action at a time he wasn’t there,” the statement said.
“Like other false accusations against Mr. Fletcher, time will show this one to be baseless as well,” it said.
Fletcher was named UC San Diego’s first professor of practice in political science in 2013 after serving two terms in the California Assembly.
Professors of practice are experts in particular fields of study who lack the academic credentials generally required to teach at the university level but whom administrators feel can benefit students with their professional experience.
The latest accusation involving Fletcher does not detail when the harassment took place.
The six-page document says only that Hinds reported the student’s allegation of harassment to a university official in April, nearly two weeks after Fletcher suspended his campaign to succeed Sen. Toni Atkins in the state Senate.
On a Sunday night last March, Fletcher announced on social media that he was dropping out of the race and entering treatment for alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress related to multiple combat tours during his prior U.S. Marine Corps service.
Days later, he was accused in a civil lawsuit of sexual assault and harassment by a former public-relations specialist at San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, the regional transportation network whose board Fletcher also served as chair.
The plaintiff, a former television journalist named Grecia Figueroa, said that Fletcher inappropriately pursued a clandestine sexual relationship with her and groped her inside the MTS headquarters after a 2022 board meeting.
The lawsuit included several text messages between the two that appear to confirm Figueroa’s allegations, but Fletcher insisted the messages were taken out of context. He said he would be able to disprove the accusations in court.
Figueroa also said she was wrongly fired from the transit system on the same day Fletcher announced his Senate campaign.
Fletcher, who is married to former state lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, denied the assault and harassment accusations but acknowledged engaging in inappropriate behavior.
He stepped away from the MTS board and resigned from his seat on the county Board of Supervisors.
The resignation left the county board at a 2-2 deadlock between its two Democrats and two Republicans for months. San Diego City Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steepe won a special election and was sworn in last month.
The civil lawsuit against MTS and Fletcher is pending in San Diego Superior Court.
