An Idaho woman has taken legal action against the law enforcement agency where she is employed, citing a hostile work environment she encountered upon her return from maternity leave. The lawsuit paints a troubling picture of the conditions she faced.

Hannah Jones, a deputy for over three years, filed the lawsuit against the Mini-Cassia County Criminal Justice Center. This detention facility, operated by the Cassia County Sheriff’s Office, is situated in Burley—a small town roughly 160 miles southeast of Boise.

According to the legal complaint lodged in Idaho state court, Jones experienced a positive work environment throughout her tenure until she came back from maternity leave in October 2023. It was then, she claims, that she became a target for “systematic harassment, discrimination, and retaliation” over several months.

“It was humiliating and it seemed really discrediting,” Jones expressed in an interview with Boise-based ABC affiliate KIVI. Despite the challenges, she shared, “I love my job. I have gotten to meet a ton of really cool people.”

The shift in her workplace atmosphere was notably stark, primarily due to derogatory remarks about her breastfeeding, which marked a significant decline from the supportive environment she once knew.

The welcoming work atmosphere, however, substantially changed for the worse due to comments about her breastfeeding, Jones said.

“I came back and it was only almost immediate that I started getting some pretty embarrassing comments about me breastfeeding and me having to go to the bathroom to go pump,” she told the TV station.

The woman alleges crude and sophomoric behavior from her peers.

“They would make comments about how I was a cow,” Jones explained. “And they would actually make mooing noises at me as I was walking through the hallways and stuff as well – in front of inmates and other agencies.”

The locus of the harassment also took a more explicit turn, she said.

“One of my male supervisors claimed that he thought I should have responded to a fight with my ‘titties’ out,” Jones told KIVI.

Litigation was not the woman’s first step. Jones initially reported the offending behavior but, she said, the complaint was not taken seriously and she eventually experienced retaliation for speaking out.

“I just felt like it wasn’t taken seriously at all,” she told the TV station. “I started experiencing what I believe to be retaliation and that’s the point that it kind of got to be too much and I just couldn’t handle it anymore.”

Next, Jones said, she filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Idaho Human Rights Commission. Both Gem State agencies, she said, issued findings in her favor.

Now, she is suing the sheriff’s office on claims of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, according to the lawsuit.

Law&Crime reached out to the sheriff’s office for comment on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming at time of publication.

Jones said the experience has changed her perspective on her career as a deputy and she worries about similar treatment discouraging other women from working in law enforcement.

“I feel my heart break for women that are coming into the force, knowing that that’s probably going to happen to them too,” she said.