Colorado’s judicial branch paid $325,000 to a pair of longtime female employees to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit they filed in 2023 that claimed they were fired two years earlier while less-experienced male colleagues were kept in their place.

The branch agreed to pay Danielle Stecco and Tracy Blea back wages, compensatory damages and their attorney fees to settle the lawsuit they jointly filed in Denver District Court, according to an agreement approved in September by the Colorado State Personnel Board.

Details of the settlements were not included in the lawsuit file, but The Denver Gazette obtained a copy of the documents through the state’s Department of Personnel & Administration.

Stecco was given two payments of $58,500, one for disputed wages and another for compensatory damages, as well as an additional $78,000 in attorney fees, according to the agreement.

Similarly, Blea was given two payments of $39,000 and attorney fees totaling $52,000, according to the agreement.

Neither woman responded to a request for comment through their attorney.

A spokesperson for the Judicial Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The payments are significant because they acknowledge the women’s claim that despite no recent history of discipline in the Information Technology Systems Division where they worked, they were fired during a supposed internal reorganization at the height of a department scandal in which allegations of harassment and sexism flourished.

Blea was a senior business analyst who was paid $89,430 yearly. Stecco was known as a product owner and was paid $127,620 a year.

The lawsuit pointed to a litany of complaints that surfaced regarding how women were treated differently than men in the Judicial Department. Those allegations were detailed in a two-page memo at the center of an alleged quid-pro-quo contract in which a former top administrator who threatened to reveal them was instead given a multimillion-dollar deal to remain silent.

Two independent investigations into the contract with former Chief of Staff Mindy Masias ultimately determined there was no contract-for-silence, decisions that were later met with widespread doubt by legislators and other administrators.

Former Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan “Ben” Coats was censured for his role in the scandal, the only time a Supreme Court justice has ever been disciplined. The state’s entire method of disciplining judges was reformed when voters passed Amendment H in November.

The women said the layoff impacted more women than men and that more men were rehired in the aftermath, bringing the total number of male employees in the department to 68%. The number of women had dropped to 32%.

Stecco and Blea each worked in the courts system for more than 20 years when the restructuring occurred. They claimed they weren’t offered a chance at any new positions despite assurances that they would be, and that the women were better qualified than the men who eventually got the positions.

In Blea’s case, she claimed she would have kept her job if administrators had followed established layoff rules in the department and the man who replaced her would have been fired because of discipline he’d been given previously for workplace misbehavior.

That came in 2020, after State Court Administrator Steven Vasconcellos took the helm following the resignation of Christopher Ryan, who had left after the Masias contract was uncovered in newspaper stories a year earlier.

The existence of the memo and its contents did not happen until February 2021 and led to legislative hearings that eventually recommended Amendment H.