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.