Former Lexington jail employee files workplace discrimination lawsuit
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Charnelle Richards sued Fayette County jail officials for racial discrimination.
- The lawsuit claims Richards faced unequal training, overtime, and discipline terms.
- One defendant, Joseph Price, recently pleaded guilty in a sex crime case.
A former Fayette County jail officer is suing several of her former colleagues and supervisors, claiming racial discrimination and a hostile work environment.
The lawsuit was filed June 27 by Charnelle Richards and her lawyer, Shaun Wimberly. The lawsuit lists her former supervisors, Joseph Price, Lisa Farmer, Jessica Bishop, Hunter Hershey and Bradley Baker as defendants, along with coworkers Justin Piercey and Jonathon Hunt.
The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, which maintains the jail, is also a defendant in the lawsuit. Susan Straub, a spokesperson for the city, said the city government can’t comment on pending lawsuits.
Richards, a Black woman, started working in the custody portion of the jail in December 2016, but moved to intake processing, a specialized area, seven months later. The lawsuit says she was given only three weeks to learn the procedures of the new department, which is half the amount of time it’s supposed to take to be properly trained.
Other white employees were given more opportunities and time to learn the procedures than Richards, the lawsuit says. Richards was threatened with a demotion if she did not complete the training within three weeks.
Richards was also written up and threatened with a demotion for making work mistakes while her white coworkers did not receive similar treatment for their mistakes, according to the lawsuit.
Another example of Richards’ unfair treatment is how her supervisors handled the jail’s overtime policy, according to the lawsuit.
Jail policy allows officers to choose assignments during mandatory overtime periods, but Richards claimed that when she chose her assignment, supervisors gave the assignment to white employees instead, increasing Richard’s workload while reducing her coworkers.’
Richards said she was written up for insubordination when she complained about the process.
Richards reported the unfair treatment to jail management, but the jail took no action. The lawsuit says her supervisors’ conduct continued, and the write-ups became more severe.
Richards also claimed Hunt and Piercey greeted each other with a three-finger salute that’s sometimes used as a symbol of white supremacy, according to the lawsuit. Jail staff let a three-fingered symbol be displayed on the jail’s Christmas tree and copy machine despite complaints from Richards.
Another time, Hunt and Piercey pranked Richards into thinking she was being detained by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, according to the lawsuit. Richards made a complaint about the prank to Capt. Patrick Burns, but her concerns were not accepted, and more write-ups were levied against her.
The lawsuit says Richards suffered a loss of wages, humiliation, embarrassment and will suffer a loss of income in the future. She is seeking back pay she would have earned if she had not been discriminated against, compensatory damages for the humiliation, a declaratory judgment that the defendants’ actions were unlawful and an injunction against further discriminatory practices.
Maj. Matt LeMonds, with the Fayette County jail, confirmed Price, Farmer and Hershey no longer work in the Division of Community Corrections, while Bishop, Baker, Piercey and Hunt remain employed.
LeMonds said the division can’t comment on pending litigation.
One jail guard recently pleaded to sex crime
One of the defendants in Richards’ lawsuit, Joseph Price, recently accepted a guilty plea deal in a separate sex crime case.
In May 2023, Price was indicted by a Franklin County grand jury on four counts of first-degree unlawful transaction with a minor and one count of first-degree attempted unlawful sexual transaction with a minor, according to court records. The case was not related to Price’s employment with the jail.
This year, Price accepted a guilty plea deal for amended charges of two counts of first-degree wanton endangerment, two counts of sexual misconduct and two counts of stalking. The plea deal said Price exposed the two victims to a risk of serious physical injury, hugged the victims from behind for sexual gratification and engaged in conduct that placed the victims in fear.
On June 27, Price was sentenced to five years in prison. But court documents say the first six months of his sentence will be served in home incarceration, and if he doesn’t violate the terms of his sentence in those six months, he will skip prison and be on probation for four years and nine months.
Maj. Matt LeMonds, with the Fayette County jail, previously confirmed Price was a lieutenant at the jail and had been employed by the Division of Community Corrections since 2012. He was suspended pending the outcome of the investigation but has since resigned.
While working as Richards’ supervisor at the jail, Price once got into Richards’ face and screamed at her in a demeaning manner in front of inmates and other employees during a mandatory overtime shift, according to Richards’ lawsuit. Richards filed a complaint about the incident, but the discriminatory treatment didn’t change.
This story was originally published July 10, 2025 at 12:41 PM.
