Politics
Woman sues FDOT, alleging harassment from boss, rebukes from HR following complaints
A former Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) employee is suing the agency for forcing her out of her job after she complained about her hostile boss who tried to control her and made sexual remarks.
Grace Rodriguez filed the lawsuit before the new year in the U.S. District Court’s Orlando division. She accused FDOT of sexual harassment, discrimination, creating a bad working environment and retaliation.
Rodriguez’s boss, Moataz “Mo” Hassan, an Operations Engineer in Central Florida’s District 5, “frequently displayed uncontrolled rage and intimidation in the workplace, including yelling at subordinates at the top of his lungs and slamming his phone on the ground in Plaintiff’s presence,” the lawsuit said.
Rodriguez said her boss continued to get more possessive and make sexual comments the longer she worked there. What she wore became a regular topic of conversation and he got jealous when she interacted with her male coworkers, the lawsuit said.
“Throughout Plaintiff’s employment, Hassan repeatedly told Plaintiff that she was ‘his’ and that she ‘belonged to him,’” the lawsuit said. “Hassan’s statements were not benign workplace expressions but assertions of sexual dominance and ownership over a female subordinate, reinforcing his control over Plaintiff’s body, conduct, and continued employment.”
Rodriguez says Hassan told her she was not allowed to close her office door, demanding she smile and “imposed the silent treatment when Plaintiff did not comply with his expectations,” the lawsuit said.
He told her in his native country, “women are considered second class citizens,” per the lawsuit.
“In or around March 2024, Plaintiff was not feeling well and asked whether she could be sent home, Hassan told Plaintiff that she could not leave, and when Plaintiff went to leave his office Hassan aggressively grabbed Plaintiff by the arm and told her not to leave.”
The lawsuit said a month later, Hassan “initiated unsolicited discussions with Plaintiff about his sex life, stating that he had not had sex in a long time and that he was seeking a woman who would do what he told her. Plaintiff reasonably perceived these statements as sexual propositions intertwined with Hassan’s supervisory authority.”
Once, he gave her a Quran and talked regularly about his religion even though Rodriguez said she was a Christian, according to the lawsuit.
“Even where Hassan’s conduct was not explicitly sexual, it imposed expectations of submission rooted in both Plaintiff’s sex and Hassan’s articulated religious beliefs, expectations that permeated Plaintiff’s daily interactions, were reinforced through intimidation and abuse of authority, and were never checked by FDOT,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit only names FDOT as a defendant, not Hassan.
Rodriguez complained to human resources after the situation with her boss kept escalating and she became fearful for her safety when he aggressively waved a shovel at her, the lawsuit said.
FDOT Human Resources Manager Marisol Bilbao told Rodriguez “that if she wanted to survive at FDOT, she needed to ‘put a smile on (her) face and shut up,’” the lawsuit alleged.
Bilbao also suggested that Rodriguez change her clothing and attitude to avoid being perceived as being the one causing problems and said “harassment works both ways,” according to the lawsuit.
Then, Rodriguez said Bilbao went directly to Hassan on May 2, 2024, and briefed him on Rodriguez’s confidential concerns about him.
“Human Resources and management repeatedly reframed Plaintiff’s complaints as interpersonal or cultural issues and failed to take corrective action, while continuing to share Plaintiff’s concerns with Hassan,” the lawsuit said.
The next day, Hassan told Rodriguez that he no longer trusted her because he knew that she had reported him to HR. He threatened to have Rodriguez removed from her job, the lawsuit alleged.
Another manager told Rodriguez if she recanted her accusations, “her job could be salvaged,” the lawsuit added.
Rodriguez said she received a negative performance review, which was out of place given her previous good work history. “This off-cycle evaluation was initiated only after Plaintiff engaged in protected activity and was used to generate purported performance issues where none had previously existed,” the lawsuit reads.
On June 11, 2024, Rodriguez filed an official complaint with FDOT’s Equal Opportunity Office alleging sexual harassment and retaliation.
Her days at FDOT were numbered. So were Hassan’s, according to the complaint.
Rodriguez said she was pressured to resign under threat of termination the same day she filed the complaint.
“FDOT’s internal investigation formally concluded that Hassan had not committed violations of Title VII or the Florida Civil Rights Act. Nevertheless, shortly after the conclusion of that investigation, FDOT terminated Hassan’s employment,” according to the lawsuit.
Florida Politics requested a copy of FDOT’s internal investigation into Hassan in late December, but FDOT has not responded to a records request nor a request for comment on the litigation.
Rodriguez’s attorney and Hassan also did not respond to messages for comment.
Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street and the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and to support his second-term agenda.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump’s proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives,” the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long.”
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump’s post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Anna Paulina Luna have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
___
Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Five seats on the Florida Gaming Control Commission (FGCC) have been tentatively settled after Gov. Ron DeSantis made appointments and reappointments this week.
DeSantis announced Julie Brown has been appointed as Chair of that board that oversees gambling issues in the state while Peter Cuderman and William Spicola were appointed as general members of the panel. DeSantis reappointed John Michael D’Aquila and Tina Repp as returning board members, a news release said.
Brown is being elevated on the gaming board as she currently serves as Vice Chair of the panel. Brown is well versed in Florida government service and was the former Secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. She’s also a former Commissioner on the Florida Public Service Commission.
Cuderman is also experienced in government work as he’s the previous Director of Legislative Intergovernmental Affairs for the Florida Governor’s office. He’s also the Founding Partner of Fidelis Fund, a Florida-Based private equity company involved with Main Street businesses. Cuderman was also a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corp.
Spicola is a lawyer at the law firm Komisar Spicola, based in Tallahassee. He’s also a member of the Second Judicial Nominating Procedures Committee and a member of the Florida Bar Judicial Nominating Procedures Committee.
Returning to the board is D’Aquila who is the owner and accountant at D’Aquila Advisors based in Jacksonville Beach. He’s also a member of the American and New York Institutes of Certified Public accountants and was a previous member of the Sawgrass Country Club Finance Committee and the Northeast Florida Society of Financial Professionals.
Repp’s return to the board comes as she is a health care fraud investigator for Qlarant. She’s also been a Special Agent for the FBI as she was an investigator of financial crime, government fraud, elder fraud and transnational organized crime.
The FGCC is composed of five members and is tasked with establishing executive and regulatory standards for gambling in Florida. It’s an area that has been elevated in profile in the past couple of years.
The FGCC recapped its 2025 operations and confiscated some $14.47 million in illegal gambling funds and another 6,725 illegal slot machines from illegal gambling operations, according to a news release issued by the agency. Those figures are significantly higher than in 2024.
In that previous year, state gambling regulators confiscated 1,287 illegal slot machines and some $7.11 million in cash associated with those unlawful gambling operations that were seized.
The appointments adn reapppointments by DeSantis still need final approval by the Florida Senate.
As U.S. debt soars past $38 trillion, corporate bond flood is a growing threat to Treasury supply
Florida GOP backs James Uthmeier for Attorney General
Reported Ex-Husband Arrested in Connection to Ohio Dentist Double Murder
-
Politics8 years agoCongress rolls out ‘Better Deal,’ new economic agenda
-
Entertainment8 years ago
New Season 8 Walking Dead trailer flashes forward in time
-
Politics8 years ago
Poll: Virginia governor’s race in dead heat
-
Entertainment8 years ago
The final 6 ‘Game of Thrones’ episodes might feel like a full season
-
Politics8 years ago
Illinois’ financial crisis could bring the state to a halt
-
Entertainment8 years ago
Meet Superman’s grandfather in new trailer for Krypton
-
Business8 years ago
6 Stunning new co-working spaces around the globe
-
Tech8 years ago
Hulu hires Google marketing veteran Kelly Campbell as CMO