New pick for top Chicago Park District lawyer accused in a civil rights lawsuit in Evanston
Parks officials had said they thoroughly vetted Nicholas Cummings but would not comment on the accusations.
By Dan Mihalopoulos
New pick for top Chicago Park District lawyer accused in a civil rights lawsuit in Evanston
Parks officials had said they thoroughly vetted Nicholas Cummings but would not comment on the accusations.
By Dan MihalopoulosThe Chicago Park District’s pick for its new top attorney is facing explosive allegations as a defendant in a federal civil rights lawsuit against him and the city of Evanston.
A lawyer who worked under top Evanston attorney Nicholas Cummings alleges she endured “racist and misogynistic harassment” and a “hostile work environment” at the northern suburb, court records show. An attorney for Cummings denied the accusations, and city officials say he was cleared in an internal investigation by outside counsel.
Park District CEO Rosa Escareño recently said officials had thoroughly checked Cummings’s background when they picked him to become their new general counsel, and Escareño expressed full confidence in Cummings.
But a spokesperson for the Park District declined to comment this week when asked whether top officials had been aware of the accusations against Cummings before offering him the high-level position at their agency.
In the pending lawsuit, plaintiff Michelle Ozuruigbo, who is Black, directed many of her strongest accusations against Cummings, who also is Black, saying he repeatedly used “racial slurs and other inappropriate comments” in workplace conversations with her.
Cummings was placed on administrative leave a year ago by the city of Evanston, but soon returned to work after an investigation into the matter by outside counsel. City officials have declined to release the investigative report but said this week that the probe cleared Cummings, and they denied any wrongdoing by him or anybody else in Evanston.
“All allegations of discrimination were found unsubstantiated and Counsel Cummings was fully reinstated as the City’s Corporation Counsel,” a spokeswoman for Evanston said in a statement to WBEZ.
Records obtained from the city of Evanston show Cummings’s lawyer denied he had committed any wrongdoing toward Ozuruigbo, saying her allegations were “false and self-serving.”
Her suit, which was filed originally in April, was first reported Thursday on the Evanston RoundTable news site. The story followed the announcement that Cummings was leaving Evanston, where he has worked since 2019, to join the Chicago Park District.
“A strong candidate for the Park District”
In 2021, WBEZ reported there were widespread allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault against female lifeguards at Chicago’s beaches and pools and also at Evanston’s beaches on the Lake Michigan waterfront. Outside investigations at both the Park District and in Evanston concluded that officials botched their responses to serious accusations.
The scandals led to the ouster of top officials at the Park District and in Evanston, with Escareño replacing longtime Chicago parks chief Michael Kelly, apologizing to lifeguards and promising reforms.
In an interview last month with the Chicago Sun-Times, Escareño was asked about hiring Cummings and replied that she had no qualms at all because he was “certainly vetted” by the Park District.
“We know that he is going to be a strong candidate for the Park District,” Escareño said on the newspaper’s “Fran Spielman Show” podcast on July 7. “We are going to welcome him in the near future.”
Escareño added, “Nick Cummings had nothing to do with the [lifeguard] scandal in Evanston.”
The city of Evanston said it has no records reflecting any communications with Chicago Park District officials regarding Cummings, who worked for the Chicago Transit Authority and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office before going to work in Evanston. He was promoted to the top legal post in Evanston in March 2021, records show.
The lawsuit against Cummings was originally filed in Cook County Circuit Court on April 18, but has been transferred to the U.S. District Court in downtown Chicago in June, and the next court date is scheduled for Aug. 25. The city and a former city manager also are named as defendants in the case.
“Cummings used racist slurs in front of Plaintiff”
In the complaint, Ozuruigbo says Cummings used a racial slur right after he congratulated her on getting hired by Evanston.
“He then said that since she would be covering for him while he was away, she would be the ‘HNIC [Head N****r in Charge]’ of the Law Department as soon as she started as Deputy City Attorney,” according to the complaint.
“This was not the only time Cummings used racist slurs in front of Plaintiff,” the complaint alleged. “For example, on or about July 30, 2021, Cummings stated that he is in the same fraternity as Plaintiffs insurance agent, but that he does not sell insurance because ‘he is not no sales n****r.’ ”
And Ozuruigbo alleges that on Jan. 15, 2022, “Cummings sent Plaintiff a Facebook video via text message entitled ‘What It’s Like Being Black At Work.’ That video showed Black women being harassed, belittled, and otherwise experiencing unlawful race and gender discrimination in professional settings.”
Ozuruigbo’s attorney, Sheryl Ring Weikal of McHenry, declined to comment Tuesday.
In July 2022, Cummings was placed on administrative leave but he returned to work the following month. Public records show an outside counsel, Vincent Rizzo of Chicago, briefed the Evanston City Council behind closed doors on “the outcome of the Cummings/Ozuruigbo Investigation” on Aug. 10.
But one member of the council questioned the investigation, according to a copy of an email obtained by WBEZ. Five days after Rizzo’s executive-session briefing of Evanston council members, 1st Ward Ald. Clare Kelly sent an email to Mayor Daniel Biss saying it had been “clearly unethical and presents the appearance of conflict of interest” to hire a lawyer who she said had worked with the accused officials.
“I am deeply concerned that the City is opting to flout basic governmental ethics practice if we rely on the investigation carried out by Vince in making our determination regarding the employment status of Nick Cummings rather than hire independent counsel,” Kelly wrote in the email on Aug. 15.
The spokesperson for Evanston said Rizzo led another investigation for the city, into a human resources complaint in the suburb’s police department, in November 2021. But officials “determined that there was no conflict.”
Kelly and Biss declined to comment. Rizzo did not return messages.
After Cummings was told he could return to work on Sept. 1, his lawyer asked the city for a copy of the investigative report in a letter sent to the top human resources official for Evanston on Aug. 31.
The lawyer, Bruce Cook of Chicago, wrote that Cummings had “violated no law, violated no city policy nor behaved in any way towards Ms. Ozuruigbo, or anyone else for that matter, that was unethical, unprofessional, or otherwise inconsistent with his commendable record of performance with the city.”
Cook did not return messages.
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Government & Politics Team.