"The El Dorado County Sheriff's Office is the target of a lawsuit – the second in two months – claiming that a "boy's club" in the department subjects women to harassment and discrimination.
In the latest suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court, three civilian employees of the department allege violations of California fair employment and federal civil rights laws.
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Nicole Sahaj-Myers, Stacie Walls and Jona Scher are currently community service officers with between seven to 24 years in the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office.
Sahaj-Myers and Walls allege, among other things, that they were punitively assigned to clean out the men's locker room at the Sheriff's Office, along with male inmates from the jail. The standard practice, the suit says, is for janitors to clean the facility.
Scher said she was the target of offensive comments from male superiors in the department and was subject to rumors that she was having affairs with some of them.
Her attempts to have the rumors quashed were ignored by superiors, according to the suit.
One of the sheriff's officers named is Capt. Craig Therkildsen, a candidate in November's runoff election for sheriff.