A former aide to Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat running for governor, sued him last fall for wrongful termination and discrimination. Fulop’s attorneys fired back in court Friday. (Nikita Biryukov | New Jersey Monitor)
Attorneys for Jersey City are urging a federal judge to dismiss an ex-staffer’s wrongful termination lawsuit against the city’s mayor, Steve Fulop, who is running to be elected governor this year.
Jonathan Gomez Noriega, a mayoral aide who Fulop fired last August, could no longer effectively do his job advocating for the LGBTQ+ community after he publicly supported the political campaign of his sister, Valentina Gomez, a conservative extremist known for her anti-LGBTQ+ views, attorney Ralph J. Marra Jr. argued in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Gomez Noriega also “deceitfully recorded” a private phone conversation with Fulop that he then allowed to be posted on social media, wrote Marra, who represents Jersey City. That was flagrant insubordination and a breach of professional trust that gave Fulop — a Democrat first elected Jersey City’s mayor in 2013 — the right to fire Gomez Noriega, the filing says.
Gomez Noriega was an at-will employee whose support of his sister conflicted with Fulop’s central policy goals of promoting equality, respect, and inclusiveness for the LGBTQ+ community, Marra added in the motion, filed Friday.
“Government employees are entitled to maintain their own personal policy and political views, but certain employees — including employees responsible for policymaking, those who represent the government to the public, and other employees who serve at the pleasure of elected officials — are expected to help advance the policy goals of elected officials as part of their jobs,” Marra said. “Those employees have no legal entitlement to employment when their superiors lose confidence in their ability to do so.”
In a lawsuit filed in November, Gomez accused Fulop and several other city employees of discrimination, defamation, and civil rights violations.
But Marra said while the First Amendment protects a wide range of speech, it doesn’t require elected officials to maintain the employment of people with opposing views.
“This is not a case about an individual’s right to speak publicly about matters of public interest or to support the candidates of his choice,” Marra wrote. “Rather, this case is about Jersey City’s ability to ensure that employees who serve ‘at the pleasure of’ an elected official can be trusted to perform their duties consistent with that elected official’s policy views.”
The flap first caught headlines last August, when the Jersey City Times reported that Gomez Noriega had donated to his sister’s campaign for Missouri’s secretary of state, in which she used homophobic slurs, bashed transgender Olympic athletes, burned LGBTQ+-themed books in social media posts, and called LGBTQ+ people “groomers and pedophiles.” Valentina Gomez lost her race in Missouri and now is running for Congress in Texas on a platform of ending “all this gay garbage.”
Fulop responded to the resulting controversy by directing Gomez Noriega, a professional swimmer who had worked on and off for Jersey City since 2018, to resign from a city LGBTQ+ task force and publicly denounce his sister’s views, according to court filings.
But the city argues the public statements he put out were “half-hearted” and did not satisfy Fulop, prompting the mayor to call him and demand a stronger denunciation. Gomez Noriega secretly recorded, or allowed his sister to record, the conversation, part of which his sister posted on social media without Fulop’s knowledge or consent, the motion says. Fulop then fired him.
“Mayor Fulop plainly had discretion to terminate Gomez’s employment, and that termination did not violate Gomez’s rights under the First Amendment or the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination,” Marra wrote.
Attorney Giancarlo Ghione, who represents Gomez Noriega, called the motion to dismiss “a giant nothing-burger.”
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