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A Black former attorney with the New York City Department of Buildings filed a federal lawsuit this week against the agency alleging racial discrimination and retaliation after she complained about a male supervisor who she says habitually made racial slurs and sexist remarks, and physically accosted her.
Shelia Cockburn claims that soon after she began working as an attorney for the buildings department in April of 2019, she observed her supervisor Eric Dalloo regularly making “discriminatory remarks with heavy racial overtones.”
Dalloo would often speak to Cockburn and other Black employees “in Ebonics — an American dialectic vernacular form of English used predominantly by African Americans,” or in a Caribbean accent.
He also allegedly used racial epithets in the workplace, often using the word “n-gga” at work, and deploying a Caribbean accent to greet Black workers. Cockburn says she heard Dalloo tell a Black employee, “Hey you my n-gga, we cool, how are you?”
Her complaint details four other occasions in June and July of 2019 when Dalloo allegedly used the N-word.
Dalloo also referred to the department’s Bronx office as “ghetto” while referring to the Manhattan office as “sophisticated,” Cockburn claims.
She says Dalloo regularly and openly discussed his personal life at work, including his drinking habits, health issues and sex life, and talked about “how he ‘enjoyed’ mistreating his girlfriend by talking down to her but felt it was okay because ‘she liked it.’”
Cockburn says she and other female attorneys were offended by such gender-based and misogynistic comments, along with the racial slurs. Over time, her “visible discomfort with and non-participation in Dalloo’s overly discriminatory behavior” led him to mistreat her, she alleges.
Starting in July of 2019, Dalloo ceased the usual practice of assigning new attorneys in the department to shadow her, she says, and also instructed another female attorney not to assign cases to her. When that attorney did so on one particularly busy workday, she says Dalloo grabbed a casefile out of her hands in an aggressive manner and yelled, “No!” and then reassigned the case to another attorney.
Over the next several months, Dalloo not only verbally harassed her but also “escalated his discriminatory behavior to include unwanted and offensive physical contact,” the complaint says.
At a hearing before a judge at the agency’s Brooklyn office in September of 2019, Cockburn says Dalloo was angry that she had agreed to dismiss a case, and “aggressively grabbed” her forearm as she exited the courtroom and attempted to drag her into the hallway, yelling “outside,” creating a public spectacle. He then proceeded to admonish her for dismissing the case, despite the fact that his own supervisor had instructed him earlier that day to do so, she claims.
Cockburn says she was “shocked and humiliated by Dalloo’s physical assault and repugnant display of unprofessionalism,” especially as the exchange took place in front of many of her legal colleagues.
A few days later, Cockburn complained to her supervisor Joseph Casciano, a Level 2 (L2) agency attorney regarding Dalloo’s treatment of her.
Casciano told her that he, too had noticed Diallo’s disparate treatment of her and further confided that Dalloo “seemed to have ‘problems dealing with women of color,’” she alleges. He vowed to talk to other supervisors about Dalloo.
Around this time, Cockburn says she learned that several meetings were held by supervisory attorneys to address Dalloo’s behavior, and that some employees had filed discrimination complaints against him.
Cockburn herself attended a meeting in December of 2019 where she and her colleagues discussed ongoing complaints about Dalloo with their supervisor Jamell Isidor, an L3 attorney. They spoke of their “discomfort regarding his use of derogatory language towards women and people of color, as well as his sex life and generally belligerent behavior,” she says.
The same day, agency attorney Sohani Khan filed a complaint with the agency’s internal EEO [Equal Employment Opportunity] office that included Dalloo’s alleged boasting about mistreatment of his girlfriend, jokes he made about the natural hair of Black women, and his habit of calling the Bronx office “ghetto,” the complaint says.
In January of 2020, at a follow-up meeting with Isodor, Cockburn says she and other building department employees discussed Dalloo’s disparate treatment of women and how his behavior “makes the entire office staff uncomfortable and upset.”
Running parallel to her unwelcome interactions with Dalloo, says Cockburn, were her efforts to pursue a promotion to a higher level attorney position.
In June of 2019 Cockburn applied for a open job as an L3 attorney, which would have raised her salary from $67,523 to $97,500. Because she was an ambitious, seasoned attorney with 13 years of legal experience, including litigation experience valued by the department, she hoped her skills would “allow her the fair opportunity to rise through the ranks” at the agency.
Her six-month probation evaluation was positive, she claims, including the highest ratings for job performance and other indications that she “prioritizes work; anticipates problems; completes tasks in a timely manner …and [works] effectively with minimal supervision.”
Cockburn did not get the job, and was told by a supervisor that was because she was relatively new to the department, but that new jobs would be posted in the future.
Afterwards, she says Dalloo “grew increasingly hostile towards her and acted upset that she had applied for the position.”
In February of 2020 she applied for another promotion to two open L2 attorney positions that would pay $88,500 per year. Just prior to her first interview, she says she asked a supervisor who had been involved with the hire why she had been rejected previously.
He told her again that she needed more experience, and also that she “did not shake his hand, linger after the interview to chat with her interviewers, and that the interviewers did not find her personable.”
Cockburn was not selected for either job. Her complaint notes that at this point she had been rejected three times for promotional opportunities and became “one of few employees besides recent law graduates or unbarred attorneys who had not been promoted to an L2 position.”
She alleges that three L1 employees who started working after her were promoted to L2 positions, even with less than three months of experience on the job. Meanwhile, she had been working for the buildings department for a year and at that point had 14 years of experience.
At that point, the complaint says, “she understood her employer’s patent refusal to promote her to be retaliation in response to her opposition to Dalloo’s discriminatory and harassing behavior” and her reports of it to her supervising attorneys.
Cockburn subsequently filed complaints of discrimination and retaliation with New York City’s Internal Affairs and Discipline Department as well as with the New York State Division of Human Rights and the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission.
Her complaints allege that the “overarching culture” at the Manhattan office “underpins” and “perpetuates” the kind discriminatory behavior that she claims Dalloo displayed.
She further claims that defendants, the city of New York and the Department of Buildings, failed to promote her “despite her years of substantive experience in administrative law and litigation, while attorneys with significantly less experience and tenure were promoted over her, many of whom were men or white.”
Cockburn asserts that she was refused the promotions based solely on her sex/gender and her race in retaliation for her complaints of discrimination and retaliation. As a result, she says she “felt and feels humiliated, degraded, victimized, embarrassed and emotionally distressed.”
Cockburn resigned from the buildings department in December of 2022.
As of mid-2024, she was employed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Office of Energy and Transportation as an engineer working on government efforts to electrify the automotive industry and to advance zero-emission transportation. Besides her legal experience, Cockburn has a background as a professional engineer and data scientist, according to her LinkedIn page and other tech industry sources.
Her salary at the DOE was listed as $136,035 by GovSalaries.com, a private government salary data aggregator.
Eric Dalloo was still employed with the New York City Department of Buildings as an agency attorney as of 2024, earning a salary of $133,828, according to the government salary site.
In November of 2024, the EEOC issued a letter notifying Cockburn of her right to sue the city and the department.
Her complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on January 22 claims violations of state and federal laws against discrimination on the basis of race and sex, and retaliation due to her opposition to the department’s unlawful employment practices.
She seeks a jury trial to determine damages for lost wages and benefits as well as compensatory and punitive damages for mental, emotional and physical injury and distress and injury to her reputation, as well as legal costs.
The defendants have 21 days, or until Feb. 11, to answer her complaint.
“The Department of Buildings rejects any form of discrimination against employees,” said Andrew Rudansky, press secretary for the department, in an emailed statement to Atlanta Black Star. “We will review the lawsuit.”
A spokesman for the New York City Law Department declined to comment while the litigation is pending.
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