BILLINGS - A woman has filed a federal lawsuit for sexual discrimination and retaliation alleging she was forced to resign from the Montana State University Billings Police Department.
Melissa Brennan filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Billings against the Montana University System, the Montana State University Police Department and unnamed individuals on Nov. 18. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages based on four claims, including retaliation and sexual discrimination in violation of federal law, and sex discrimination and wrongful discharge in violation of Montana law.
Shiloh Skillen-Robison, interim director of MSUB communications and marketing, told MTN News the university does not comment on pending litigation.
According to the lawsuit, Brennan was hired by the campus police department as an officer in January 2021 and promoted to sergeant in December 2022, the first female officer to hold that rank in the agency. She resigned from the department in February 2024 because, the lawsuit alleges, a union representative "called Brennan three days in a row and advised that she was going to be terminated and that if she wanted to avoid her POST being revoked, she needed to resign."
The lawsuit states problems at the department for Brennan surfaced in early 2023 when she raised concerns with Chief Brandon Gatlin and Assistant Chief Charles Smith about a directive sent out requiring officers to assist in parking enforcement. During a meeting, the lawsuit alleges, Gatlin stated: "Admin told me that we needed to make money for parking," and "I need the Officers to write more tickets to make money for parking." Gatlin added that "if they don't, I will have to start writing them up," according to the lawsuit.
Brennan "raised concerns" with Gatlin and Smith, the lawsuit states, because she believed "a mandate to officers to write more tickets may be an illegal quota."
Montana law prohibits "arrests, citation, or stop quotas" by law enforcement, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states that on Oct. 1, 2023, Gatlin sent Brannan an email alleging Brennan was advising other officers not to write parking tickets, that Brennan had not brought her concerns to her supervisors, and "set a meeting to discuss possible insubordination" for later that month. During that meeting, the police chief "admitted that no one had said Brennan instructed them not to write tickets," and the legality of the order was discussed.
Later in October during a meeting with Human Resources, Brennan "raised concerns about being treated differently from male co-workers," which resulted in an investigation by the university that instead "focused on identifying wrongdoing on the part of Brennan," the lawsuit states.
Brennan also raised concerns about the directive to write more parking tickets with the union representing university employees, but the union "took no action" and failed to mediate the issue, according to the lawsuit.
Brennan was placed on paid administrative leave in January 2023 based on the justification that she was "not issuing enough parking tickets," the lawsuit states. She resigned the following month.
The lawsuit also includes allegations that Brennan was treated differently than male employees at the campus police department, including those who were investigated "for far more egregious offenses" such as an officer who had sex with students while on duty and an officer who had sex with a gas station employee while on duty. The lawsuit also alleges Brennan was not offered the same level of training opportunities as other officers.
