A jury in D.C. federal court found Thursday that Capitol Police discriminated against a former K-9 officer in training on the basis of her sex and awarded damages of $850,000.
The verdict was reached seven years after Mauricia VanMeter, a current Capitol Police officer who was dismissed from the department’s K-9 training program in 2017, alleged that her superiors targeted her for being a woman and treated her differently from her male counterparts.
The lawsuit was filed in 2018 and wound its way through the court system. The jury returned a verdict after several days of deliberation and a 10-day jury trial at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
