‘Shocked and bewildered’: Sac State’s ex-DEI officer speaks out on suing CSU
For Mia Settles-Tidwell, suffering in silence was not an option, she said.
A year ago, the former chief diversity officer at Sacramento State sued President Luke Wood and the California State University’s board of trustees over discrimination based on age, gender and race that she said she faced at the workplace. After The Sacramento Bee reported on the lawsuit last week, Settles-Tidwell issued a statement June 19 detailing her experience at the university before she resigned in April 2024. The university, meanwhile, has called the allegations “baseless” and “devoid of merit.”
“I was shocked and bewildered by President Luke Wood’s discriminatory and retaliatory actions toward me,” Settles-Tidwell said. “I revered him as a racial equity expert and looked forward to working with him. I soon learned that the public racial justice persona was incongruent with the private equity malpractice he committed against me.”
Since he took over in 2023, Wood has made diversity initiatives the cornerstone of his presidency. Previously the chief diversity officer and the first Black Distinguished Professor at San Diego State, he championed the Black Honors College and the Wileety Native American College at Sacramento State. These initiatives were designed to provide students with culturally grounded educational experiences that highlight the history and contributions of Black and Native American communities. Under his leadership, Sacramento State became the first Black-Serving Institution in California and increased its Black student enrollment by 23%. In Wood’s cabinet of 12 campus leaders, 50% are women.
But Settles-Tidwell said this commitment to equity did not translate into Wood’s working relationship with her. In the complaint filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the Black woman leader said she was humiliated in front of her colleagues, offered a lower pay raise than her peers, excluded from teams and documents she should have had access to, and slowly stripped of her full responsibilities. When Settles-Tidwell raised concerns, the situation worsened, according to her lawsuit.
“Intra-racial discrimination is real and prevalent,” she said in her statement earlier this month. “It is most difficult to call out someone of your same race, ethnicity, gender in these situations. Discriminatory and retaliatory practices are gender-neutral and race-independent. So suffering in silence could not be my answer. Just look at what happened to Antoinette Candia-Bailey at Lincoln University. She received no justice.”
Candia-Bailey, a Black woman who served as vice president at Missouri’s Lincoln University, died by suicide in January 2024 days after receiving a termination letter. News outlets reported that she had previously accused the school’s president, John Moseley, of bullying, harassment and discrimination. By March that year, Moseley was reinstated to his position after a third-party investigation did not find evidence that substantiated the bullying claims. Advocacy groups have continued to demand accountability in the case and call for larger institutional reform.
In her lawsuit, Settles-Tidwell said she had no choice but to resign from her post in 2024 as a result of the discrimination she experienced. She said there was an attempt to move the Office for Equal Opportunity out of her portfolio and that she was initially excluded from the Black Honors College leadership team despite having written the original proposal for it. Settles-Tidwell was “restricted” from hiring for her division, her lawsuit says, and directing its programming. Compared with her peers’ minimum 2.5% merit pay raise in 2024, she only received a 1.5% increase, the complaint says. And she was berated in front of her peers by Wood, according to her lawsuit, with no future opportunity to discuss the issues he raised.
In her statement this month, she drew special attention to a CSU-wide Juneteenth Symposium in June 2024. Settles-Tidwell said she spent two years planning it, but was not adequately credited for it. The CSU system holds a biennial Juneteenth Symposium to bring all its campuses together to honor Black history and reflect on the ongoing pursuit of justice. It is hosted by a different campus each time and Sacramento State took charge for the second-ever event in 2024.
“Never once was my named mentioned or credited with this work at the event I planned,” Settles-Tidwell said. “President Wood received the credit and he has been receiving his raises 6% this year. The irony of exploiting Black labor on Juneteenth.”
When Settles-Tidwell resigned in April 2024, Wood issued a statement in which he thanked her for her service to the university and called her a “strategic thinker who is strongly committed to student success and equity in education.” In highlighting her achievements, he noted that she had been “instrumental” in planning the then-upcoming Juneteenth Symposium, apart from implementing an antiracism plan, strengthening the school’s response to sexual harassment cases and creating taskforces to address antisemitism and Islamophobia.
However, a review of the YouTube livestream of the event showed no mention of Settles-Tidwell during opening remarks or the vote of thanks at the end of the two-day event.
In her statement last week, Settles-Tidwell called for an end to “systemic and institutional sanctioned violence, gaslighting, exploitation and hostile environments in the workplace against Black women.”
Now, to compensate her for her alleged loss of income and the emotional and physical stress she said she endured, Settles-Tidwell is seeking damages of an undefined amount through her lawsuit. And Sacramento State, which has denied all allegations, is getting ready to prove its side of the story in court. The parties will meet in court for the next hearing in the case Sept. 8.
What’s in the lawsuit?
Settles-Tidwell’s allegations:
- Discrimination and harassment based on race, gender and age
- Retaliation for complaining about discrimination and harassment
- Wrongful termination
Sacramento State’s response: “CSU believes the claims asserted by Plaintiff Settles-Tidwell are entirely baseless and devoid of merit, and CSU is prepared to vigorously defend against these claims,” a spokesperson said.
What happens next: The Los Angeles County Superior Court will hear a motion filed by the CSU board and President Wood to transfer the case to the Sacramento County Superior Court on Sept. 8.
This story was originally published June 27, 2026 at 1:41 PM with the headline "‘Shocked and bewildered’: Sac State’s ex-DEI officer speaks out on suing CSU."
