Newly promoted official sues Attorney General Josh Kaul and his top deputy in civil rights complaint

A high-ranking state Department of Justice official who has accused the agency of racial and sexual discrimination has now filed a federal lawsuit against Attorney General Josh Kaul and his top deputy. 

Tina Virgil, the head of the Division of Criminal Investigation, says in her lawsuit, which was filed last week, that Kaul and Deputy Attorney General Eric Wilson violated her civil rights by allowing her to be discriminated against by officials at the agency.

Virgil, 57, earlier filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April accusing state officials of underpaying and mistreating her because she is a Black woman. The complaint is pending. 

Her attorney, Lester Pines, said the lawsuit was filed last week because it is a civil rights complaint and the statute of limitations for such filings was about to expire. He said Virgil and the state are currently in talks. 

"We are still in mediation and hope to resolve all of Tina Virgil's claims soon," Pines said Saturday. 

Gillian Drummond, a spokeswoman for Kaul, said the agency denies the allegations leveled in the new suit. Kaul is a first-term Democrat who is running for re-election.

"An independent agency previously conducted a thorough investigation of similar allegations made by Administrator Virgil and it was found that the evidence did not support the allegations of work-rule violations," Drummond said.

"Disappointingly, the new complaint contains a number of false or misleading statements. DOJ denies the claims in the complaint.”

Last month, Kaul promoted Virgil, the former head of DOJ's Division of Law Enforcement Services, to the administrator of the Division of Criminal Investigation. Her pay jumped from $116,022 annually to $132,870 per year.

Kaul's office said the promotion had nothing to do with her complaints about the agency.

Virgil has worked at the 800-employee agency for nearly three decades in a variety of positions, including state fire marshal and director of the Special Investigations Bureau. 

In her nine-page lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Virgil reiterated a number of the points made in her EEOC complaint. 

Virgil said she was hired by Kaul at a salary below her predecessors, who she said were white males. Her suit also said she has more experience than any other administrators in the Department of Justice but was paid less than all of them at the time of her appointment. All the other administrators are white.

According to the suit, Virgil brought these issues to Kaul's attention in 2019, but he didn't act. Sources close to Kaul dispute this. 

In addition, Virgil claimed in her suit that she has been the subject of nonstop abusive behavior because of her race and gender. 

Her suit said Wilson has repeatedly mistreated female staffers, often exploding in anger when Virgil or other women disagree with him. She also claimed her calls were secretly recorded by another division administrator, prompting an internal investigation. 

New allegations in lawsuit

Virgil's lawsuit also contains several new allegations. 

It claims a now-retired division administrator improperly accepted a $1,000 gift from a patron but was never investigated.

Virgil said a veteran female staffer was removed from her oversight based on false rumors that they were in a relationship. The suit also says no disciplinary actions were taken when white employees had inappropriate sexual relations with subordinates. 

Kaul refused to have DOJ pay for Virgil's association memberships, although it did the same for other top agency officials, according to the suit. 

Sources close to Kaul said all of those allegations are false. 

In 2020, Kaul asked two University of Wisconsin System attorneys to look into allegations raised by Virgil and others against three top administrators. The report, which was released in June, did find some problems in the agency but concluded the three officials did not contribute to a hostile workplace environment. 

Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.