Part 151: Playing the Whistleblower Game – Reporting and Retaliation in the Workplace

Published January 18, 2025.

Jan 19, 2025

Barbara Hedges, USC's first female senior administrator (middle) and Joyce Bell Limbrick, sit alongside athletic director Mike Bohn during USC Athletics' Title IX celebration Thursday on campus. (Photo courtesy of USC Athletics)

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The intimidation is the point. Last summer, in a quietly released report by the Federal Judicial Center and National Academy of Public Administration commissioned at the request of California Democrat Norma Torres, it was found that even the federal judiciary isn’t “immune” from workplace troubles, as Chief Justice John Roberts characterized the dynamic. According to a National Public Radio report by journalist Carrie Johnson, the study came about “after judicial authorities appeared to limit cooperation with a separate probe by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.” The aviation industry is little better, as was highlighted in a recent report in the Seattle Times by journalist Patrick Malone, which quoted Whistleblowers of America President and CEO Jackie Garrick, characterizing the dynamic as “a David versus Goliath power imbalance,” adding that “David had God on his side.” Moreover, as Garrick notes, “Most whistleblowers are pretty much alone,” punctuating “the truth gets treated like it’s a crime.”

In the aviation industry, the most common response to whistleblowing was to leak their identities to the people they were complaining about, which in turn led “them to be retaliated against by managers and shunned by peers.” Take it from me, a whistleblower journalist, that protecting sources in a place like Los Angeles is hard; often the sources are their own worst enemies, but even more often people will go after you for speaking with the press. Lawsuits might as well be like Kabuki theatre, with, for prominent local example, the lawsuit by former LA City Councilmember Gil Cedillo surviving an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion from the accused leakers of the LA Fed Tapes and apparently now even repeated court dates post-abandonment by his attorney. The filing of frivolous litigation is just one form of legalized harassment that often successfully snuffs whistleblowing attempts. Powerful institutions such as my own, the University of Southern California (USC), are highly skilled at crafting fraudulent, pretextual grounds for termination.

As was reported last week in the Los Angeles Times by journalist Ryan Kartje, USC did it again, drawing litigation on behalf of former Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director and Senior Woman Administrator Joyce Bell Limbrick. The highest ranking woman in the USC Athletics Department, with 13 years at USC and 20 total in the field of sports administration, apparently USC found sufficient cause to terminate her in September 2023, only a mere four months after removing Athletics Director Mike Bohn following complaints from Bell Limbrick, among others. Is USC crazy? While a copy of the lawsuit wasn’t immediately available, as described by Kartje, this followed a predictable pattern with USC using its Title IX office, known as the Equity, Equal Opportunity, and Title IX Office (EEO-TIX), to launch an investigation using a private law firm, Cozen O'Conner, to handle the matter and then swiftly snuffing the whistleblower. USC reportedly claimed that Bell Limbrick had a “pattern of poor performance.” When will USC learn its lesson?

This comes from the same university that so colossally failed to check deceased gynecologist George Tyndall after numerous reports of inappropriate behavior that it all but forced whistleblower nurse Cindy Gilbert out of her job before paying off Tyndall. After this was exposed by the Los Angeles Times, thanks mostly to the efforts of journalist Paul Pringle and friends, Tyndall would die peacefully at home before a criminal trial after USC paid out more than $1.1 billion in legal settlements to victims of harassment and sexual abuse. Several of the same people who were responsible for this continue to occupy high-ranking positions in the USC Human Resources leadership even after the departure of Senior Vice President Felicia Washington, a close ally of soon-to-be-outgoing President Carol Folt. You don’t have to look far to find that Joyce Bell Limbrick was highly respected in her field. An attorney with a Masters of Business Administration from the USC Marshall School of Business, she was featured as a moderator in USC’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the nation’s fundamental gender equity law, alongside Bohn and Barbara Hedges, a longtime athletics administrator, in June 2022. USC has a right to lay off, even fire people, but it doesn’t get to do so wrongfully.

The formerly top-25 university continues to struggle with a culture that demands loyalty at all costs despite putting on progressive pretenses. Shamefully, this matter appears to involve USC’s new Vice President of EEO-TIX, Linda Hoos, formerly of the University of California, where her predecessor Catherine Spear now occupies a top position in civil rights. As noted by Kartje, the lawsuit from Bell Limbrick states after USC represented the Cozen O’Connor reviews being one of workplace culture, that “Linda Hoos, USC’s vice president and Title IX coordinator, told her the same day that the firm’s actual intent was to investigate complaints and reports of misconduct by Bohn, including her own.” USC’s inability, even dogged unwillingness to be honest, much less transparent and forthright, continues to dog it. Most importantly, USC continues to fail to release data consistently about Title IX complaints, as well as retaliation and discrimination. This continues despite an alarming rate of sexual violence at the institution.

I’m pleased to report that to date we’ve collected 66 signatures on Change.org since December 5, 2024 calling for transparency. A phone call placed to USC’s EEO-TIX office requesting the additional publication of data went unreturned. USC quietly last August released a single year of data from 2021-2022 despite being legally obligated to do so by the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), since February 2020, when President Folt and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees Rick Caruso signed a resolution agreement with the government on behalf of the Tyndall victims. Incoming President Donald Trump has yet to name a nominee to lead the civil rights enforcement branch of the Education Department. Trump has previously vowed to “abolish” the department overall but also has nominated former wrestling executive Linda McMahon to lead it and Penny Schwinn from Tennessee’s department as Deputy Secretary. Outgoing OCR Assistant Secretary Catherine Lhamon, who previously also served under President Barack Obama, recently joined on January 8 a panel with other Joe Biden appointees hosted by a CNN legal commentator to celebrate their progress. At USC, progress is still highly questionable.

The meeting was on Zoom, and I missed it in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire, but most certainly I wouldn’t suggest that Bell Limbrick take her complaint to OCR, which has seemingly all but turned a convenient blind eye to USC. The university does release some information related to criminal reports made under the Clery Act to USC’s Department of Public Safety, which documented an increase from 2021 to 2022 followed by a drop in 2023 for reports classified as “Rape” and a steady-level of “Dating Violence” and “Stalking.” Statistics for calendar year 2024 have to be released. USC had publicly terminated its former AD Bohn in 2023 over his behavior, which didn’t quite rise to the level of criminality. According to Kartje’s report, Bell Limbrick had alleged that Bohn, in addition to undermining her work, punched her in the arm on one occasion, and openly declared, "Female athletes should be responsible for looking out for male athletes to ensure they don’t do anything that would get them in trouble in their personal lives.”

We should all want a society that is safe, whether appearing in court, flying on an airplane, or sending kids off to college. Whistleblowers play an important role in guaranteeing that happens, yet so often they’re ostracized for reporting, and Bell Limbrick has been no exception. Since her termination in September 2023, she’s “been unable to find 'substantially similar employment.’” Incredibly, I’m often questioned in interviews about why I left this institution and generally disbelieved in my account of USC, not really caring about having accurate reporting, much less appropriate responses to complaints, much less acting out of political motive. Yet here we are, and the room continues to fill out. I never met Joyce Bell Limbrick, but I fully believe her story. Moreover, the people she’s dealing with are not unfamiliar, and I don’t trust them one bit. Several people, including faculty, staff, and students, have continually come forward with appalling stories of institutional maltreatment. Not all complaints are sustainable, but there’s enough there to be alarmed at USC’s repugnant unwillingness to respect Title IX when inconvenient for appearances sake. The investigation games are strong in that institution.

Across America, we’re failing the accountability test in workplaces. In the FAA case, a formal system works, but it’s essentially designed to even reject supposedly duplicative complaints that have already triggered an investigation. Whistleblower Santiago Paredes states that he was labeled a “showstopper” after reporting defects in the airframes of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes. Clearly, the show can’t go one like this, and reporting systems, whether internal or external, are unlikely to be completely effective. It seems incredibly unlikely in the incoming Trump era that the culture of whistleblowing is going to be strengthened. Mother Jones journalist Abby Vesoulis writes in interviewing attorney Mark Zaid, who represented several national security whistleblowers during the first Trump administration, that “there have been individuals who work within the federal government who have contacted me in anticipation of prospective retaliation.” The federal system is undoubtedly almost more reliable than any private sector protections. Mother Jones headlines that we’re heading toward another era equivalent to the “Red Scare” when supposed communists were persecuted. Zaid works with the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid to defend whistleblowers.

Most whistleblowers aren’t going to appear before Congress, though, and most won’t attract a significant amount of support or media attention. In most cases, you’re going to be lucky to make it to civil court. Prevailing in court against highly-paid attorneys can be difficult, with a significant incentive to settle cases quietly before going to jury and a substantial verdict. So where does that leave the average American who sees something happen at work that they don’t think is right? Largely in fear of reporting, and more likely suppressed. Los Angeles proverbially is a political backwater compared to Washington D.C., and much of the rest of America, even in urbanized places, is even less defensible. The pressure to conform is becoming increasingly stronger, as Zaid states to Vesoulis, When I was in college 40-plus years ago, I did a paper on Germany, and I never understood how such a civilized cultural environment fell so quickly into what the 1930s and ’40s became.” He adds, “I didn’t understand that until I watched the MAGA movement.” Trump’s inauguration set for Monday has been moved indoors due to intensely cold weather, but could Trump really stand it out in the cold?

The power to destroy lives through blacklisting, including with defamatory termination practices, is incredibly strong. Simply put, retaliation works; that’s why they do it. You can break people with such tactics. Girardi & Keese whistleblower Kimberly Archie recently traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii, to present a paper completed in conjunction with Purdue University researcher Christopher Rashidian entitled "A Multi-Theoretical Approach to Understanding the Tom Girardi Embezzlement Scheme: Integrating Convenience Theory, Game Theory, and Social Network Theory.” Yes, we’re breaking out the game theory, because if you want to understand organizations, much less criminal or unethical behavior in organizations, the essential proposition remains: can we get away with this? Rashidian and Archie investigate the following hypothesis: “How did the interplay of convenience factors, strategic game-theoretic decisions, and network centrality enable Tom Girardi to execute and sustain his embezzlement scheme within the legal profession?” Girardi recently reported to the U.S. Marshals for a final psychological evaluation before sentencing, but in his prime he was a master complaint killer.

In conspiracy with multiple actors within the California State Bar, the corrupt attorney was able to eliminate multiple complaints against him for fraud. Rashidian and Archie slightly understate their case that Girardi’s criminality was the equivalent of organized crime, writing, “For example, he may have used his reputation and influence to secure the cooperation or silence of critical players while strategically withholding information or misleading others to maintain his advantage.” There’s zero question that Girardi deliberately and purposefully corrupted the State Bar; they’ve admitted as much in a formal report. Overall, the paper is a valuable, brave step forward in developing a more academic understanding of whistleblowing as essentially a game of catch-me-if-you-can. Rashidian and Archie state that “scholars should develop and refine methods for measuring and testing the model's key variables and relationships, drawing on various data sources and analytical techniques.” They suggest surveying as one tool; another I would suggest is journalism, essentially the act of reporting on matters of grave public interest.

Why did USC fire Joyce Bell Limbrick? In short, because they can get away with it, and in doing so, reduce the future probability that she would successfully report anything else, such as a bozo-Athletic Director again. Eliminating the perceived threat so often is more important than eliminating the actual threat. Bell Limbrick’s termination is only the latest data point in a dataset that keeps on growing that suggests that USC has hardly purged itself of the strong desire to act in its perceived legal interest ahead of any actual institutional growth. A very similar study could be performed on other institutions with persistent misconduct problems and suppressive responses, whether we’re talking the Los Angeles Police Department or the California State Senate. It’s like Kevin de León, the former LA City Councilmember and Senate Pro Tem leader, stated in the famously captured October 18, 2021, illegal recording, itself an act of perfidy, in discussing the game-like dynamics of scandal management: “What is very interesting here too is, not just MRT [Mark Ridley-Thomas] but USC themselves.” De León, who has since been voted out of office, adds that it’s a “preemptive strike.” Some people win, but others lose.

Usually it’s the whistleblowers losing. Those who remain anonymous as simple leakers have a much better chance of achieving their goals in the whistleblower game. The most effective thing is typically to not go public unless exposed, or unless there are stakes that are perceived as more highly compelling. New systems in development, such as Hush Line, developed by entrepreneur Glenn Sorrentino, are the brave new frontier in reporting. Hush Line is a software application that offers a more secure ability to report anonymously. Bell Limbreck says that she met with USC’s “consultants” several times after Bohn’s termination to relay her experience. While some organizations likely welcome such feedback, it appears that, at least in this case, doing so backfired and may have even helped USC to develop a convenient narrative to support the termination. In the world of whistleblowing, control of the narrative is everything because it frames the facts and ultimately the outcome both internally and externally when made public. Narrative is power, and intimidation is a solution that works best when coupled with retaliation.

Link: Judicial system fails at policing workplace misconduct, study finds

Link: Most complaints against Boeing, FAA go nowhere, frustrating whistleblowers

Link: Whistleblowers of America

Link: Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo sue over leaked audio recording

Link: Former employee sues USC for allegedly letting Mike Bohn harass her, then firing her

Link: Heartfelt tributes and joyous reunions highlight USC Title IX celebration

Link: EEO-TIX, OPE release inaugural report

Link: USC Release Annual Title IX Data to the USC Community

Link: Trump Names Experienced Educator as His Pick for Deputy Education Secretary

Link: USC 2024 Annual Security Report

Link: Warning to Whistleblowers: “We Are Back in the Days of the Red Scare”

Link: Whistleblower Aid