Theresa Codding has been looking for answers from the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO), which lost evidence she sent as part of a complaint, since September 2023. At that time, an investigator from the agency confirmed to Codding that he was unable to locate the files she had sent.

Lost evidence is not the only issue Codding, who first filed a complaint in November 2021, has had with the agency. She has also experienced long wait times between communications with CHRO employees about her case and turnover in staff assigned to investigate the complaint.

Codding’s case has been pending since November 2021. It took four months, until March 2022, before the CHRO responded to let Codding know the complaint had been retained and she would be contacted by a mediator.

State statute requires the CHRO to submit a finding in an investigation no later than 190 days from the date of the case assessment review unless there is good cause. The executive director or their designee can grant no more than two extensions of three months each, but only with showing for good cause.

Between March and April, Codding was involved in attempts to mediate the complaint via email. However, the other party wasn’t interested in mediating and the case was referred to CHRO’s Early Legal Intervention Division, where it would go to a public hearing. Four months later, in August 2022, Codding hadn’t received any updates. In early August, the CHRO’s legal division sent Codding an email informing her that the case would be assigned for investigation within the next week and she should be hearing from that person within the next several weeks.

On September 1, Codding was contacted to schedule a fact-finding conference, with a date set for October 20. On October 12, Codding received an email informing her that the investigator was out of the office and the conference would need to be rescheduled. Codding was told she would be contacted when the investigator returned.

Three months later, in January 2023, Codding was contacted by a new investigator who had been assigned to the case to reschedule to fact-finding conference. It was held in March 2023, sixteen months after Codding had first filed her complaint.

In early April, Codding turned in her final rebuttal and waited for a draft decision. Two months later, in June 2023, when she still hadn’t heard anything, Codding reached out to the investigator, who told her the decision would be coming shortly.

In August 2023, Codding still hadn’t heard anything from the investigator. When she reached out again, she was told the investigator no longer worked for the CHRO and that her case would be considered by another member of the legal team. This left Codding questioning why she hadn’t been notified when the investigator left and if any work had been done on her case in the interim.

Codding reached out to the CHRO’s Eastern regional manager, who deferred her questions to attorney Michelle Dumas-Keuler in the CHRO’s legal division. She also reached out to Tanya Hughes, the CHRO’s executive director, but received no response.

On August 31, Dumas-Keuler responded to Codding and informed her that the investigation was complete, that she was reviewing documents in the case, and that a finding coming shortly.

On September 12, Dumas-Keuler contacted Codding again, not with a finding, but to let her know that the case had been reassigned the previous week. Again, Codding was left to wonder what had happened. She replied to Dumas-Keuler, noting that in her previous email, Dumas-Keuler had said the investigation had been completed. She also wanted to know what work had been done in the case over the past six months.

The same day, Codding received an email from the new investigator, the third assigned to her complaint. He stated he would be going through the case file that week to determine whether additional investigation was needed before issuing a draft finding and asked Codding to let him know if there was additional information that needed to be submitted. Codding followed up to confirm that the investigator was in receipt of eight different documents she’d submitted as part of the case on September 12.

On September 15, the investigator responded and said he’d reviewed the file but couldn’t find the documents she’d identified. Codding replied the same day, noting that she was extremely troubled they could not be located and that the previous investigator had confirmed the files were received.

The new investigator responded again on September 22, confirming the files could not be found. He stated that the agency had begun the process of working with their IT to recover them but that re-sending the documents would be the quickest way to move the cast forward.

Codding refused to do so. She wanted the agency to provide her with three things before she resent the documents: a letter apologizing for losing the documents, a letter identifying the problems that had occurred in her case during the previous six months, and a letter detailing what steps the agency has taken to prevent a similar situation happening in the future.

Codding hasn’t received any correspondence from the CHRO since, despite following up every month to request the letters be provided. In addition to the investigator, she’s reached out to Hugher, Dumas-Keuler, and others in the agency to inquire about the lost evidence and ask what the agency is doing to ensure a similar situation doesn’t happen again but hasn’t heard anything back.

For Codding, the agency’s response is no longer about the finding in her case. She wants the CHRO to acknowledge there are serious issues in how it has handled the case and to ensure those issues are fixed so something similar doesn’t happen to other cases.

The CHRO told Inside Investigator that it does not keep statistics on lost or misplaced evidence.

State statute requires the CHRO to report annually to the judiciary on the number of cases from the previous fiscal year that exceed the time frame in which the agency is required to submit a finding. According to the report, limits to the system the CHRO uses to digitally track complaints mean that information can’t be tracked. Their system “can only provide the total length of time a complaint has been pending before the Commission from the date of filing until the final closure of the complaint.” The CHRO considers complaints pending longer than 490 days to be aged and complaints pending for any time less than that to be timely.

In 2022, the CHRO reported it processed 4722 complaints of discrimination. 123 were pending for more than 490 days at the end of the fiscal year. 259 complaints that were closed during that year took longer than 490 days. Together, those two figures represent eight percent of complaints CHRO processed in 2022.

In the same report, the CHRO reported that the most common reason given for delays in complaints was that investigators were assigned the case late.

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