California State Senator Faces Federal Lawsuit After Party Switch, Accused of First Amendment Violation
California state Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil was sued last week for sexual harassment. Now, KCRA 3 has learned that she is being sued again, this time in federal court.
A lawsuit was filed on August 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California by Kelley Coelho. It said that Alvarado-Gil broke her First Amendment rights when she kicked her out of an event in Turlock earlier this summer.
The claim says that Alvarado-Gil told police to quickly remove Coelho from a press conference on June 21 about the release of a sexually violent predator in Turlock. In an exclusive interview with KCRA 3 on Monday, Coelho said that she was first let into the event before Alvarado-Gil stepped in without giving much of a reason.
KCRA 3 looked at emails between Coelho and Alvarado-Gil’s communications head and found that Coelho was going to the event.
He runs B and C Investigations as a private detective. She said that her company was hired to help families in Mountain View, Turlock, and Ballico who are having problems with sexually violent predators. As Coelho told KCRA 3 on the day of the news conference, she and Alvarado-Gil were both against the planned release of a sexually violent criminal in Stanislaus County. He said that Jack Griffith, a Republican who ran against Alvarado-Gil in the 2022 state Senate primary, was also kicked out of the event because the senator wanted him to be there.
“They said we were not pressed, we were identified as not being pressed, and we needed to get out,” she stated. “I asked, ‘What happened and why?’ and the individual who pulled me out specifically said Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil and her staff called us by name to be removed from the location.”
In an interview with KCRA 3, Coelho was asked why the state senator would want her to be fired. “I don’t know the reasons why,” she said.A woman named Coelho is suing herself and wants $5 million in damages. She said she is in talks with lawyers who might take her case.
A short time ago, Alvarado-Gil changed her party membership from Democratic to Republican. Chad Condit, who used to be her chief of staff, sued her in a different state court, saying she sexually harassed him, treated him unfairly, and broke other state labor rules.
Emails looked at by KCRA 3 show that Coelho filed her lawsuit almost two months after she first tried to file an official ethics complaint with the California Senate Ethics Committee on June 24.
Even though Coelho sent emails, a spokesman for the committee’s leader, state Sen. Dave Cortese, said Monday afternoon that the committee had not gotten any complaints about Alvarado-Gil.
In a statement, Erin Peth, the top counsel of the Senate Committee on Legislative Ethics, said, “The Senate Committee on Legislative Ethics gets a lot of questions from residents. All of them are looked at and, if necessary, dealt with according to Senate Rule 12.3.” “Senate Rule 12.3(b)(6) says that complaints and other records of the Committee must be kept secret. That’s why we can’t give you the information you asked for.
As of Monday evening, KCRA 3 had also asked Alvarado-Gil, the California State Senate Rules Committee, and the Republican Caucus in the state Senate for their thoughts but had not heard back.
The case has not yet been given a court date.