NEWARK, NJ – A longtime Newark city employee who accused top officials of discrimination and retaliation has lost her latest bid to revive parts of her civil rights lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Evelyn Padin issued a 23-page opinion on January 15, 2026, denying Wanda Stevenson’s motion for reconsideration in Stevenson v. City of Newark et al., No. 20-cv-18722 (EP)(AME). Stevenson, a Christian African American woman and the city’s Chief Sanitation Inspector since 1994, had asked the court to reconsider its June 2025 decision granting partial summary judgment to Newark and several city officials.
Stevenson’s wide-ranging suit accused the City of Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka, and senior officials Phillip Scott, Thomas McDonald, and Khalif Thomas of sex, race, and religious discrimination, retaliation, and maintaining a hostile work environment. She also claimed the city violated New Jersey’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA) and intentionally inflicted emotional distress.
Judge Padin’s prior opinion allowed only portions of Stevenson’s discrimination and hostile work environment claims to move forward against McDonald and Thomas. The court had dismissed her retaliation and failure-to-promote claims, as well as her emotional distress count, citing CEPA’s statutory waiver and the expiration of relevant statutes of limitation.
In her motion for reconsideration, Stevenson argued the court made several “clear errors,” including prematurely applying CEPA’s waiver, misreading the evidence on her retaliation claims, and overlooking facts related to her alleged denial of promotions—particularly the vacant Assistant Director of Solid Waste Management position, for which she was the only qualified candidate on the City’s Civil Service list.
Judge Padin rejected each argument.
On CEPA, Stevenson claimed the waiver of overlapping state-law claims should not have applied until expert discovery or a pretrial conference. The court disagreed, holding that after three years of discovery and a motion for summary judgment on her CEPA count, Stevenson had “ample opportunity to gather facts and choose her remedy.” Citing the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Young v. Schering Corp. and later appellate rulings, Judge Padin wrote that CEPA’s waiver properly applied once Stevenson “elected to pursue” her CEPA claim at summary judgment.
The court also upheld its prior ruling dismissing Stevenson’s retaliation claims, finding she failed to show a causal link between her 2019 internal affirmative action complaint and later adverse actions. Judge Padin noted that most of the alleged mistreatment—such as being excluded from meetings, denied overtime, and stripped of work vehicles—occurred both before and after the complaint, undermining her claim of retaliation.
“Without additional facts suggesting those acts were committed with a retaliatory motive, Stevenson failed to establish a causal nexus,” the judge wrote, also pointing out that Stevenson had not shown new evidence or legal error that would justify reconsideration.
Stevenson further argued that the court overlooked evidence that she was passed over for the Assistant Director of Solid Waste Management role, which she said remained vacant despite her eligibility. But Judge Padin ruled that Stevenson had not raised that argument in her prior filings, meaning it could not be “overlooked” for purposes of reconsideration. Even so, the judge noted that Stevenson provided no evidence that any named defendant was personally involved in the decision not to fill the position or that discrimination motivated the outcome.
“Stevenson has failed to establish facts in the record that create a dispute of material fact as to whether any Defendant was involved in the decision not to hire her,” Judge Padin wrote.
In conclusion, the court found “no clear error of law or fact” in its earlier ruling and denied the motion in full.
The case, which has been pending since 2020, will proceed only on Stevenson’s remaining hostile work environment and discrimination claims against McDonald and Thomas, while the City faces potential vicarious liability under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.
Bottom line: Stevenson’s request to reopen her dismissed claims was denied, and the case will move forward narrowly focused on her remaining discrimination allegations.
