Former San Jose superintendent awarded $2 million in discrimination lawsuit

Kathy Gomez, the former superintendent of Evergreen School District in San Jose, was awarded about $2 million by a federal court after suing the district and alleging that she was discriminated against on the basis of her gender, according to the East Bay Times.

The federal court determined that the district had “significantly underpaid its first female superintendent,” the Times reported. Gomez retired in 2019 after serving for eight years as superintendent. She filed the lawsuit in 2020.

District studies had previously shown that Gomez was underpaid compared with the superintendents of nearby districts, and she was also underpaid compared with her male predecessor at Evergreen School District.

In his findings, Judge Nathanael Cousins wrote that the San Jose district “failed to show that the pay disparity between Gomez and her predecessor was justified by a job-related ‘bona fide reason other than sex,'” the Times reported.