The City of Fairfield has agreed to pay more than $1.7 million to settle a gender discrimination and harassment lawsuit brought by Battalion Chief Jessica Fleshman, the first woman ever to reach that rank in the Fairfield Fire Department.
The settlement was reached last month without any admission of liability by either party.
Fleshman, a 20-year veteran of the department, alleged in her 2023 lawsuit that her historic promotion to battalion chief was met with resistance by some in the department.
According to Fleshman’s lawsuit, the battalion chief faced harassment and retaliation, creating a hostile work environment that “undermined her authority, interfered with her job, and derailed her career.”
Fleshman, who oversaw training for the department, said she joined Fairfield Fire after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, then rose through the ranks until her promotion to battalion chief in 2021.
But Fleshman alleges the promotion quickly became a source of turmoil.
“I was in my chief’s office two or three times a week having to answer for some allegation brought forth against me,” Fleshman said. “It’s well over a hundred [complaints], a couple hundred… My male counterparts weren’t treated the way that I was.”
Like most fire departments across the country, the Fairfield Fire Department is overwhelmingly male. Women make up fewer than 5% of firefighters in the department’s ranks, according to department data from last year. Nationwide, female firefighters remain underrepresented, comprising about 9% of all firefighters, according to the National Fire Protection Association and Women in Fire. The number is even smaller when removing volunteer fire departments from the equation.
In 2024, NBC Bay Area surveyed major Bay Area fire departments on the number of women they employ. You can see that story by clicking here.
Fleshman described some of the complaints against her as silly, but said others were serious and accused her of putting firefighters in harm’s way.
Investigative Reporter Hilda Gutierrez explains Fairfield’s first female battalion chief lawsuit against the city.
“From me wearing sunglasses during training and being intimidating, to severe things like safety concerns that I’m putting people in danger by holding trainings when it was too hot, or that I got people burned,” Fleshman said.
She said she was also accused of being “too direct” and causing “hurt feelings”, according to her lawsuit.
According to Fleshman, each complaint was determined to be unfounded, and she was never disciplined. The Fairfield Fire Department declined to comment on a question from NBC Bay Area concerning the outcome of those complaints.
“What happened to Chief Fleshman is what I’ve seen over and over again,” said civil rights attorney Deborah Cochin, who represented Fleshman in her lawsuit against the city. “She reached a level, and she reached that level because she was amazing. And then she had to speak out, and nobody had her back.”
In 2022, according to Fleshman’s lawsuit, she reported the alleged harassment to the department’s chief. But records from the city show her complaint was not sustained and Fleshman said nobody ever faced discipline. The city investigated a second complaint in 2024 from Fleshman about how she was being treated, and city records show her allegations were again determined to be unfounded.
“By not doing anything, what happened is it emboldened those people,” Cochin said.
In a statement to NBC Bay Area, Fairfield Fire Chief John Sturdee said the city “hired multiple independent and neutral investigators” to review Fleshman’s complaints, and none found evidence of sex discrimination or a hostile work environment. He emphasized that Fleshman’s allegations “have never been proven in court.”
Some advocates for women in the fire service say it’s common for complaints like Fleshman’s to go nowhere, and they fear it sends a bad message across an industry where women are heavily outnumbered.
“There has to be some kind of accountability instead of just ignoring [the issue] and hoping it will go away,” said Lauren Andrade, an Orange County fire captain and the president of Equity on Fire, a nonprofit advocating for underrepresented groups in the fire service. “Because it’s not. You can’t just not address these big issues. It continues to leave the door open for more of the same behavior.”
Fleshman said the experience took a heavy toll and left her feeling isolated.
“Not one person in that agency reached out or tried to help me through it,” she said. “I was really dead to the organization at that point.”
Andrade, however, was one of the few people Fleshman said she could lean on for support as she went through the legal process with her department.
“Most of these people, all they want is to be treated the same as their male counterparts,” Andrade said. “Just the same, right?”
Fleshman said she knew suing the city and speaking out could end her career, but she stands by her decision.
“We need to change the culture of the fire service,” she said. “It’s one of the last cultures to change, we women are just as capable as our male counterparts to do the job.”
Under the terms of her settlement, Fleshman will remain on paid administrative leave until her planned retirement next year. She’s currently teaching as an adjunct fire instructor at Solano Community College.
To contact investigative reporter Hilda Gutiérrez about this or other stories, email hilda.gutierrez@nbcuni.com
Hilda Gutierrez, Michael Bott, Alex Bozovic and Robbie Beasom
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