The Brief

Three days after the Mountain Fire tore through the hillsides of Camarillo in Southern California last November, Craig Crosby was at home assessing the damage when he spotted two men canvassing the neighborhood. Crosby’s house was still standing, but the blaze had burned down the northwest corner of the structure and his avocado orchard. Every surface was covered in ash and soot. The windows had melted, the doors were scorched, and everything reeked of smoke.

The men eventually made it to his doorstep and introduced themselves as franchise employees of the national restoration company Servpro. They told him they could help with the cleanup, and that they worked with all major insurance firms, including AAA Insurance, where he held a policy.

Crosby, who is a consumer advocate and founder of the Counterfeit Report, was wary. He told them he was not ready to authorize repairs, but that they could assess the damage. When they handed him a one-page access form, he scrawled a few amendments: his insurance adjuster’s information and a line clarifying that he only wanted “evaluation, recommendation, documentation, and inspection.”

“I like to memorialize exactly what I say,” Crosby later recalled. “And it struck me a little unusual that they didn’t have a problem with me changing a corporate form.”

Over the next 10 days, the company sent more than a dozen workers to his house.

They moved furniture, wiped the walls, and dusted surfaces. Along the way, they copied a AAA Insurance representative on emails, leading Crosby to believe that his policy would cover the work. But Crosby started to notice they were cleaning surfaces that probably needed to be ripped out and tossed.

Then they began causing new problems.

As they tore out insulation in the attic, they damaged HVAC pipes and vents. (An HVAC technician would later deem the system inoperable due to the damage.) They also dinged the garage door, stained carpeting, and broke an attic access door.

When Crosby called his insurance adjuster to complain about the company’s shoddy workmanship and excessive billing, he was shocked to learn that AAA had never approved the work.

In fact, they told him One Silver Serve LLC, the franchise that had approached Crosby, was on their internal blacklist.

When he told the cleaning company it would cost roughly $16,000 to replace the HVAC system, they initially offered in writing to cover the cost if he signed a liability waiver. Once he did, the company reversed course. Instead of paying, its lawyer told him he owed the company more than $62,000 for their services.

Then, on Valentine’s Day, the company escalated it further.

Its lawyer filed a mechanic’s lien — a legal claim against a property for unpaid work — on Crosby’s home. He couldn’t believe it. He’d never paid a credit card bill late, let alone had a lien on his property.

“I pay all my bills a month in advance,” he said. “That’s how conscious I am not to jeopardize my reputation and standing.”

A sign in Altadena, California warns people whose homes burned in the Eaton Fire in January of being approached by unlicensed contractors.

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One Silver Serve LLC, based in Encino, is one of Servpro’s roughly 2,300 independently owned franchises. It benefits from Servpro’s national reputation, but operates with little direct oversight from the parent company. The quality of work, billing practices, and ethical standards are entirely left to the local franchise.

About a dozen of Crosby’s neighbors had similar experiences with One Silver Serve after the Mountain Fire, according to county records and court filings. Each was approached by workers at their doorstep in the days after the fire, told insurance would cover costs, signed an authorization form, and later received exorbitant bills for cleaning.

Some, like Robert Perez, a funeral director down the street, received notice of a mechanic’s lien for roughly $58,000. When Crosby, Perez, and others didn’t cough up the money, One Silver Serve sued them in Ventura County Superior Court.

Crosby’s insurance adjuster eventually declared the home a total loss from the fire — a determination that restoration professionals typically identify during their initial assessment, before cleaning commenced. Crosby has since filed counterclaims for fraud, breach of contract, property damage and elder abuse.

An attorney for One Silver Serve declined to comment. Kim Brooks, director of communications for Servpro, said the company is aware of the lawsuit against Crosby and does not comment on pending litigation.

A growing problem

More than a third of people affected by a disaster report experiencing fraud, according to a survey commissioned by the American Institute of CPAs, a national organization of accountants. About 8% said they experienced contractor fraud, and another 10% reported vendor fraud, which involves improper payments to real or fictitious businesses.

Post-disaster scams come in many forms. In some cases, contractors ask for money up front and then disappear. In others, they may tear down walls damaged by floodwaters or fires, collect a portion of their fees, and never return to rebuild the home. But in the case of more sophisticated actors, they use insurance companies and the legal system to put homeowners in a bind.

“Any component that involves people who have been impacted and are vulnerable, people will try to find a way to capitalize,” said Niambi Tillman, a regional director with the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau. “You’ll see people price gouging or inflated costs with excessive billing, trying to convince people to make decisions very quickly and cough up money on the front end, and then not delivering the services.”

As hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding become more frequent and severe, the disaster economy has ballooned — and with it, opportunities to take advantage of people in crisis. Disaster survivors who have already lost homes, and in some cases, loved ones, are left further traumatized and financially strained.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau estimates that upward of 10% of post-disaster spending is lost to scams every year. With nearly $183 billion in infrastructure losses from weather-related disasters in 2024, contractor fraud has become a lucrative business.

And its consequences ripple throughout the economy. The rising cost of recovery, fueled in part by fraudulent activity, then causes insurance premiums to rise and insurers to reduce coverage or leave a region altogether. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, fraud, particularly as perpetrated by contractors and other third parties, is “a threat to the stability of the insurance market.” USI Insurance Services, one of the largest insurance brokerage and consulting firms in the country, estimates that fraud is responsible for $900 more in premiums per policyholder.

One of Crosby’s neighbors, who asked for her name to be withheld, was not home when the Mountain Fire ripped through her neighborhood and burned part of her house. One Silver Serve charged more than $100,000 to clean the property — an amount she never agreed to — and put a mechanic’s lien on her house when she didn’t pay. Since the fire, she’s rented an apartment in the nearby city of Oxnard and has been coordinating repairs with a licensed contractor. For now, she’s focused on rebuilding and plans to deal with the lien afterward.

“In my whole 82-year-old life, I have never come across such absolute crooks,” she said. “Here you are, a devastating thing that your house … has burned, and they come and do this. It’s horrible. Right now, I don’t know how to get the lien off of my house.”

Warnings and enforcement

In the aftermath of wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding, state attorneys general, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and local law enforcement officials have taken to warning homeowners to be on the lookout for scammers.

Servpro franchises aren’t the only offenders in post-disaster contractor fraud. But Servpro’s national reputation and professional branding lend an air of credibility to franchisees’ operations, making them harder to scrutinize.

Servpro was founded in 1967 as a small painting operation in Sacramento, California. Within two years, the company launched as a franchise cleaning business and began expanding its operations. By 2000, it had 1,000 franchises, and by the end of the decade, it made more than a billion dollars in revenue. Today, the company has a network of over 2,300 franchises and is a multibillion-dollar organization that can serve 97% of the country’s ZIP codes within two hours.

Once franchisees are approved, they receive classroom and hands-on training at the company’s headquarters in Gallatin, Tenn. The company requires that franchisees use Servpro-branded equipment and professional cleaning products, paint any service vehicles with the company’s green logo and decals, and wear its black and green uniforms.

“Servpro has a proprietary brand identity guide that establishes and maintains a consistent professional customer-facing image for brand awareness and professionalism,” the company’s website notes.

But it’s unclear if Servpro has processes in place to hold franchise owners accountable for questionable practices. Across the country, there are hundreds of complaints with the Better Business Bureau and other consumer websites about price gouging, overcharging and engaging in intimidation tactics by Servpro franchises. For instance, the Better Business Bureau profile for Servpro Northeast Salem in Oregon has multiple complaints of fraudulent liens placed on homes after the company damaged property and overcharged for work. Similar complaints exist for franchises in Naperville, Ill.; Douglasville, Ga.; and Marietta, Ga.

In 2023, when a major storm blew through central California and dumped nearly 5 inches of rain over 24 hours, the floodwaters damaged Wee Shack, a family-run burger restaurant in seaside Morro Bay. The restaurant’s owner, Hoai Duc Ngo, hired Servpro of Morro Bay/King City for water and mold remediation.

The company required him to sign a contract to receive an estimate and later told him the work would cost about $130,000 — nearly equal to his entire insurance coverage. When he refused to pay the charges, the company filed a mechanic’s lien against the property and sued him, despite the fact that they hadn’t provided an estimate up front, had done minimal restoration work, and had caused additional property damage. Ngo later had the work completed for about $15,000, and filed counterclaims against the company for negligence, misrepresentation, fraud and concealment, among other charges.

Owners, volunteers and community members clean up mud and debris at a coffee shop in Marshall, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene in 2024.

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Jabin Botsford

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Some franchises have faced regulatory action.

After Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina in 2018, Servpro of Boise, an Idaho-based franchise, sent workers to the region for cleanup. They approached residents of an apartment building that had suffered water damage, conducted cleanup and then filed a lien and a lawsuit against the condo owners for $100,000 when they refused to pay what they saw as an exorbitant bill. The North Carolina attorney general’s office took on the case and ultimately settled with the company, canceling the outstanding lien and dismissing the lawsuit. (According to the Better Business Bureau, Servpro of Boise also includes a nondisparagement clause in its contracts with customers, prohibiting them from filing complaints or posting negative reviews.)

But the accountability that happened in North Carolina is rare. Since the rules and regulations for how contractors are required to operate change from one region to another, fraudsters often cross jurisdictional lines after natural disasters to seek out work in regions with the least protections.

Amelia Hoppe, co-founder and executive director of Emergency Legal Responders, an organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and justice after natural disasters, said that homeowners need to be particularly careful about out-of-state businesses.

“The vetting for local governments is really paying attention to who’s coming in from out of state,” she said.

In at least one case, the national Servpro headquarters does appear to have taken action against a franchise.

After multiple complaints from customers of excessive billing, charging for work not performed and intimidation, the company terminated its agreement in 2018 with Servpro of Rosemead/South El Monte. When the franchise continued to operate with Servpro’s logo on a van, the company sued. A federal court ultimately sided with the national company.

According to California records, Servpro of Rosemead/South El Monte’s business license is suspended, though where its owners and past employees have gone since is uncertain.

Mountain Fire aftermath

In Camarillo, One Silver Serve displayed red flags typical of fraudulent contractors, experts said. For one, door-to-door canvassing after a natural disaster, though common, can be a telltale sign of predatory behavior aimed at exploiting vulnerable homeowners. The practice is so prevalent among unscrupulous actors that state laws often require a three-day rescission period, giving homeowners and businesses a brief window to cancel contracts signed under pressure at their doorstep. California is one of the states with a three-day rescission period, and for contracts signed in regions with a disaster declaration, the law guarantees seven days to rescind the agreement.

“The lien tactic, especially, we warn about that a lot,” said Hoppe. “It’s legal leverage without informed consent. Even when it’s technically allowed, it often plays out as coercive. People are overwhelmed, underinformed and don’t have good options.”

Another red flag was that One Silver Serve never provided Crosby an estimate of the damage or a scope of work before starting. Without a detailed breakdown of the planned repairs and their costs, the company could later demand virtually any fee it wanted, consumer advocates warned.

In one Camarillo homeowner’s case, the bill they eventually received stretched dozens of pages, with line items like “clean baseboard,” “clean recessed light fixture,” and “clean closet organizer and rod.” None of those items needed cleaning at all — they had to be ripped out and replaced because of fire damage.

A final warning sign, experts said, is failing to confirm whether the insurance company has a track record with the contractor and will cover the repairs.

“A call to the insurance company, an estimate of benefits from the insurance company, these can be valuable checks on the validity of that relationship,” said Keegan Warren, executive director of the Texas A&M Health Institute for Healthcare Access, who has advocated for the role lawyers can play in identifying and combating harmful practices after a disaster.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contractors clear the remains of a church burned in the Eaton Fire.

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Mario Tama

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For Crosby and others, their experience with One Silver Serve has left them shaken and mistrustful of the disaster-restoration industry. Crosby has since moved back into his house and has been slowly making repairs to the sections that were damaged by the fire. His neighbor, however, faces a longer road to recovery. She’s in the midst of securing permits to rebuild the deck and other parts of the house that burned down. She hopes to be back in her home by January.

“When you tell this story, it’s like, ‘Oh, come on, I had to be stupid,’” she said. “But it’s just unscrupulous. You lose your faith in humanity.”

Operating in L.A. fire burn zones

Meanwhile, One Silver Serve continues to operate in Southern California. In January, after the Palisades Fire took 13 lives and burned more than 23,000 acres in and around Los Angeles, One Silver Serve filed at least seven lawsuits in the Los Angeles Superior Court for breach of contract and other allegations. It’s not clear how many of these cases are similar to the ones the company filed against homeowners in Camarillo.

In an April Facebook post, Servpro highlighted the work of its many franchises, including the cleanup One Silver Serve did after the Palisades Fire. “When Servpro franchises come together, wonderful work results,” the post said.

We hope you’ve gotten used to the hot weather, because it’s going to be here for a while.

The National Weather Service has issued yet another heat advisory for much of Southern California, less than a week after other high-temperature warnings were lifted.

This week’s advisory will be in place from 10 a.m. Wednesday through Monday. Forecasters expect temperatures to climb steadily over the course of Wednesday and Thursday.

The San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and other inland areas in L.A., as well as Riverside and San Bernardino counties, will likely see highs ranging from the mid-90s to about 105 degrees. Areas closer to the coast, including downtown Los Angeles and much of Orange County, will hit the 90s. Beaches will hover mostly in the upper 70s.

Humidity will also add to the discomfort. Even though it’s decreasing slightly, it makes cooling down harder, especially at night.

People who work outdoors or do not have air conditioning are especially at risk from the heat and humidity, along with people over 65, young children and other sensitive populations.

Fire risk

Forecasters are warning that conditions are ripe for fires, driven by a combination of wind and dry vegetation.

Southern California hasn’t seen much rain recently, despite the humidity, leaving plants with little moisture and turning them into the perfect fuel.

“Even though the air feels kind of moist, we're in the time of season where it doesn't matter. The fuels are dry and they're ready to go,” said NWS meteorologist Ryan Kittell.

Kittel said people should take extra care with anything that could create a spark, and residents in fire-prone areas should remain aware of their surroundings in case a fire starts.

The fire risk is likely to be concentrated in a few specific areas that will experience higher winds than others, including parts of the 5 Freeway corridor in northern L.A. County, especially around the Grapevine, and in southern Santa Barbara County.

For most of the region, though, winds should stay fairly mild.

Dangerous beach conditions

Southern Californians also have to contend with some ocean-specific risks this week.

Forecasters expect dangerously large waves and strong rip currents to hit the coastline at a time when the heat may drive more people to the beach. The conditions are expected to persist through the weekend.

If you decide to head to the beach, it’s a good idea to ask a lifeguard for advice on the conditions before entering the water. It’s also recommended to swim only near occupied lifeguard stands, stay off of rock jetties and avoid turning your back to the waves.

South-facing stretches of coastline will bear the brunt of the swell, which is being driven by two tropical storms churning hundreds of miles away in the Pacific Ocean.

“Those two systems generated the winds and the waves locally that are pushing towards us, and so that's creating elevated surf and some stronger currents than normal,” Kittel said.

The swell is not expected to cause significant coastal flooding as high tides remain relatively low.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Free transportation to the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area swim beach will be available this week as East LA families continue to seek relief from another heat wave and the aftermath of the Lineage warehouse fire.

Los Angeles County is offering complimentary transportation Wednesday through Saturday at select Eastside parks so residents can enjoy a day at the lake at no cost.

More than a month after the Lineage Logistics warehouse fire, many residents continue to report persistent odors from rotting food and cleanup efforts. Because of the ongoing air quality concerns and community complaints, Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation has canceled its local aquatic programming.

To ensure families still have access to summer recreational activities, Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis directed resources toward providing the “beach bus” program to Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area Swim Beach in Irwindale.

Read below for more information on the free shuttle services, schedules and more. 

Pickup locations

Belvedere Aquatic Center

5035 1st St. East Los Angeles, CA 90022

Obregon Park Pool

4021 1st St. Los Angeles, CA 90063

Salazar Park Pool 

3864 Whittier Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90023

City Terrace Park Pool

1126 N. Hazard Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90063

Shuttle dates and times 

• Wednesday, July 22
• Thursday, July 23
• Friday, July 24
• Saturday, July 25

Morning trip: 

• Check in at 8:30 a.m. 
• The bus departs East LA at 9 a.m. 
• The bus leaves Santa Fe Dam to go back to East LA at 12 p.m.

Afternoon trip: 

• Check in at 12:30 p.m. 
• The bus departs East LA at 1 p.m. 
• The bus leaves Santa Fe Dam to go back to East LA at 4 p.m. 

What to know

No registration or proof of address is required, but children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Bring your own food and drinks. Space is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

An outgoing California State University president, one of two administrators at the center of a multi-million dollar discrimination lawsuit, may transfer to a different Cal State job while the university pays his salary and benefits. The Cal State Board of Trustees will review the transition plan and decide whether to approve the president’s emeritus status Wednesday.

The proposed new job and salary for Cal State San Bernardino President Tomás Morales will be announced at the Wednesday meeting, according to Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith. Morales received $655,626 in pay and benefits in 2024, the most recent figure available from TransparentCalifornia.

Cal State recently spent $12 million settling the lawsuit in which two female employees at Cal State San Bernardino said they were harassed and discriminated against based on their gender by two male university administrators: Morales and former Palm Desert campus dean Jake Zhu. Cal State continues to deny any wrongdoing. Zhu is an emeritus faculty member, a title given as a gesture of appreciation for service contributed to the university, and Morales remains in good standing with the university.

Morales resigned at the end of the school year and, because of his good standing, is eligible to receive a coveted executive transition package with faculty retreat rights. That means he can continue to work as a university faculty member.

This Wednesday, a Cal State Board of Trustees committee will view a presentation on Morales’ transition plan. Later that day, the full board will discuss Chancellor Mildred Garcia’s recommendation to grant him the title of president emeritus.

A ‘cesspool of gender harassment and discrimination’

The two women, Clare Weber and Anissa Rogers, both formerly worked as high-ranking administrators at Cal State San Bernardino. Weber was appointed deputy provost and vice provost of Academic Affairs on the main campus in 2017, and Rogers served as associate dean at the satellite campus in Palm Desert starting in 2019. During the 2021-22 school year, Weber and Rogers each confronted their male supervisors with what they believed was strong evidence of a gender pay gap and sex-based bullying in their workplaces. Both were pressured to resign almost immediately, they alleged in a 2023 lawsuit that calls the Cal State system a “cesspool of gender harassment and discrimination.”

Rogers, then-associate dean at Palm Desert working under Zhu, was terrified a firing would ruin her reputation and career prospects, and agreed to resign. Weber, then-vice provost of academic affairs, refused and was fired.

In their joint lawsuit, they sued the Cal State Board of Trustees, Zhu and Morales.

“The lawsuit shows systemic, sexist bullying,” Weber said in an interview. “It was primarily from President Morales.”

Bentley-Smith said the university system has already thoroughly reviewed all of the lawsuit’s allegations and resolved the matter through the settlement.

Weber and Rogers have submitted a public comment to the board of trustees imploring them to scrutinize Morales’ “good standing” before approving the proposed transition plan.

Cal State president accused of berating women

The lawsuit alleged Morales was notorious for routinely harassing and acting aggressively toward female Cal State employees. He ranted at women, excessively criticized and undermined them, attempted to intimidate them, and held women to higher standards than men, the suit complaint read.

But faculty concerns about Morales began years before the lawsuit. A 2016 survey revealed that over 60% of Cal State San Bernardino employees felt the campus climate had worsened under Morales’ tenure. The faculty senate wrote in a 2017 resolution of “no confidence” in Morales’ performance that the survey results indicated an environment of toxicity, fear and distrust had formed under Morales’ tenure, which they added was rife with bullying, favoritism and retaliation.

Two months before his appointment as Cal State San Bernardino’s president in 2012, while Morales served as president of the College of Staten Island, more than half of that college’s senators also approved a resolution of “no confidence” in his leadership.

“It was a ‘his way or the highway’ vibe, particularly for women. I was berated and put down and yelled at. I had other colleagues that experienced the same thing,” Weber said.

Walking on eggshells around Morales caused her stress and made it difficult to do her job, Weber said.

“Sometimes I got to feeling isolated, like I was the only one, and I think probably other women did too,” Weber said.

In late May 2022, a California State University Employees Union study demonstrated that white male Cal State employees earn about 3% more than men of color, 5% more than white women and 7% more than women of color.

Weber wanted to see if a similar pattern applied to her job. She conducted research, consulted a compensation specialist in the campus’ human resources office, and determined that she was the lowest-paid female vice provost in the Cal State system. She also found that, with the exception of one female, and one male who made about $3,000 less than Weber, every female Cal State vice provost made less than every male vice provost.

Weber met with her boss, then-interim Provost Rafik Mohamed, in June 2022, where she planned to discuss her concerns over the pay gap she’d identified.

“I was scared,” she said. “I had my data, I had notes ahead of time. I wrote little encouraging messages to myself before I was in the meeting.”

At the same time, she felt she had reason to be hopeful. She’d just spearheaded and secured the university’s regional accreditation, kicked off a new strategic plan, and, only a few weeks before, earned the highest possible score on a mid-year performance review: “exceptional leadership.”

At the meeting, Mohamed attempted to assign her additional job duties, the suit alleged. In response, Weber asked for a 12% equity raise and suggested there was a pay disparity among genders at the university.

Mohamed told her he would pass the concerns along. Weber also emailed the university president, Morales, with the same raise request. Four weeks later, Mohamed told Weber she would have to resign, with Mohamed stating he “could not” work with Weber, the suit alleged.

Weber wrote an email to Morales protesting.

“I explicitly raised concerns that these female Vice Provosts were being paid less because of their gender,” she wrote. “I have been shocked and saddened that CSU’s response to my complaints was to subject me to unprecedented and unwarranted criticism and then – just a month later – ask me to ‘resign’ from my position. This is highly offensive and totally discriminatory, and retaliatory.”

She asked Morales to rescind the resignation request and open an investigation into the pay equity concerns.

Weber was fired the next day, she said. She retreated to a faculty position as required by her original appointment letter.

Mohamed did not respond to CalMatters’ request for comment.

Morales’ office referred CalMatters to the Cal State San Bernardino Office of Marketing and Communications, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Discrimination also alleged at Palm Desert campus

Cal State San Bernardino hired Rogers in 2019 as an associate dean — her dream job.

“When I interviewed, it was perfect,” Rogers said. “Then I quickly realized that I had just been immersed in hell.”

From day one, Rogers said she perceived the culture at San Bernardino’s Palm Desert campus as male-driven and discriminatory. The campus dean, Zhu, stuck out to her in particular with his penchant for screaming at people, especially women.

Men who worked for him would model his behaviors in his presence and at staff meetings, even those who were normally kind and supportive, Rogers said. Women struggled to speak up in meetings without being interrupted, yelled at, called “too emotional” and “sensitive,” or belittled, she said. By contrast, men were always treated with respect, she said. Eventually, Rogers said she gave up presenting her own ideas and began sneaking them in through a male colleague, from whom the ideas were often accepted.

In addition, several employees declared in the lawsuit under penalty of perjury that Zhu would publicly treat Rogers like a secretary or assistant, though she was the second-highest ranking employee on the satellite campus.

“It was awful,” Rogers said. “I hated going to work every day. My anxiety increased. I was constantly on guard.”

Tensions boiled over at an informal meeting with the dean and several of Rogers’ colleagues in October 2021, at which Rogers was not present. According to various attendees who reported back to Rogers during the meeting via text and later that day in person, several men ganged up on a female interim associate dean, interrogating her for around 25 minutes about her preparations for an upcoming campus visit with a Cal State trustee. Zhu watched the verbal onslaught and did not act, various female employees who walked out of the meeting in protest alleged.

That same day, Rogers approached Zhu in his office and told him Cal State needed to do a better job at disrupting sexism. Zhu told her she could train the men to behave differently, the suit states, though the male employees involved reported to the dean. Zhu told a different faculty member who complained to him about the meeting, social work department chair Deirdre Lanesskog, that the men were probably just trying to impress him, the suit alleged.

An employee said under penalty of perjury in the lawsuit that Jolene Koester, who served as Cal State’s interim chancellor from 2022 to 2023, worked for Cal State to “coach” Zhu in late October 2021. A few days after approaching Zhu, Rogers also reported to Koester that Zhu exhibited sexist conduct and bullying.

In November 2021, Mohamed instructed Rogers to tell colleagues she was resigning, citing a “leadership issue” he did not elaborate on, according to the lawsuit. He told her that was her only option if she hoped for career advancement, the suit states. On January 1, 2022, she resigned and retreated to faculty.

“I call it fired,” Rogers said. “They told me, ‘Either leave or you will be fired.’”

The joint lawsuit by Weber and Rogers split into two trial proceedings. A jury awarded Rogers $6 million in damages in October 2025 and Weber settled for $6 million in lieu of a trial. In court, Zhu defended his leadership techniques and said he treated everybody in the same way.

“I raised voices to make a point, to change the tones, not in the malicious way or discriminatory way,” he said according to court transcripts.

While testifying, Mohamed admitted that he did not report various complaints regarding Zhu’s alleged gender mistreatment because he saw the accusations as “low-grade bias,” despite being a mandated reporter of sexual harassment under Cal State policy.

“Everybody has bias. We all harbor biases that are just ingrained in us from how we’re socialized, how we are brought up, the environments that we were reared in,” Mohamed said. “The allegation of bias in and of itself, in my view, does not require a reporting of bias, an alleged bias to Title IX. It’s the action on that bias that triggers that requirement to report.”

Mohamed did not reply to a request for comment on his role in either of Rogers’ and Webers’ departures. Mohamed announced his retirement on July 16 in an internal email to faculty reviewed by CalMatters.

Zhu did not respond to CalMatters’ request for comment.

Executive transition package up for approval

After Zhu retired in June 2023, he retreated to faculty and is now an emeritus faculty member.

Morales is slated to get an executive transition package that would enable him to retreat to faculty and stay on the university’s payroll until he starts another Cal State job. All university executives who complete this program must remain in good standing at the start and throughout the transition assignment, according to a 2022 trustee agenda item.

Executives are rendered ineligible if it is found that they violated university policy or engaged in serious misconduct, per the item.

San Bernardino’s chapter of the California Faculty Association urged the board of trustees not to approve executive transition benefits for Morales in a May statement.

The lawsuit “raises serious questions about whether President Morales should be regarded in good standing for those benefits,” said Thomas Corrigan, a communication and media professor and the union chapter’s communications coordinator. “Dr. Rogers’ and Dr. Weber’s case really stands out as a moral outrage with exceptional financial, reputational and human costs.”

After Weber and Rogers filed their joint lawsuit in March 2023, Weber said, Cal State finally kickstarted its investigation into her 2022 pay gap complaint. The university system sent her a pay analysis two months later, stating there were seven vice provosts who earn a lower salary than Weber, including four men.

The university’s analysis, Weber said, was a “sham.”

“They had a male vice provost listed as earning zero pay. They had people that were at a lower rank than me in the comparison, people that would report to me,” Weber said.

Weber said that Jeanne Durr, former interim associate vice president of Human Resources at Cal State San Bernardino, conducted the analysis; Durr did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In July 2023, the California State Auditor published a report assessing how the Cal State system responds to sexual harassment allegations. The auditor found several campuses closed sexual harassment cases without providing a reason, and did not consistently discipline perpetrators. The report listed 16 recommended reforms for the Cal State system, including developing standardized guidelines for sexual harassment investigations, regularly reviewing compliance with sexual harassment policy, and universalizing the case management system used by each campus.

In 2024, a new law, Assembly Bill 1790, set a legal requirement for Cal State to follow the recommendations by July 1, 2026. As of July 2026, one recommendation has not been carried out: establishing a system to collect and analyze sexual harassment data from all campuses. The Chancellors’ Office plans to complete this by June 2027.

Weber taught sociology for an additional four years at Cal State San Bernardino until she stepped down as agreed upon in the lawsuit settlement.

“My faculty colleagues were wonderful,” Weber said. But “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid when I went to campus. I had numerous panic attacks. I chartered my route around campus so that I wouldn’t run into any of the administrators that harmed me.”

Rogers left her faculty position at the university within about two years.

“In the end, it killed any desire I had to ever move forward in my career. I have absolutely zero interest, which is too bad. I was hoping to be at least a dean in my career trajectory, (but) I won’t touch that,” Rogers said. “I’ve lost faith in systems.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 to screen for projects that ran afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities.

It’s an admission that lawyers for the research professors say is proof that the agencies illegally canceled nearly $2 billion in grants. And that’s a major development in a lawsuit filed by UC researchers against the Trump administration to permanently get their grants back.

The researchers’ legal team is now asking the judge in the case to skip a trial and formally declare that the White House repeatedly violated the constitution, including the First Amendment. A court hearing on whether that'll happen is scheduled for Oct. 20.

The federal agencies made the admission about the keywords in signed stipulations filed in federal court last week in a case called Thakur v. Trump that’s been ongoing since last spring.

The stipulations in the court filing show the agencies “did not terminate any grants based on alleged noncompliance with the terms of the grant” and instead used “general criteria, rather than grant-specific assessment of each award’s compliance, or performance,” the lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote.

Lawyers for the UC professors now contend that the admission proves three wide-ranging constitutional violations:

• By using keyword searches to review hundreds of grants and terminate them en masse rather than reviewing them individually on their merits, the Trump administration targeted research it found politically disfavorable, which is a First Amendment violation.
• In terminating 283 Department of Energy grants from states where a majority voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, and leaving untouched hundreds of grants that went to “red” states, the Trump administration wrongly punished researchers for merely living in states the White House politically opposed.
• And by terminating billions of dollars in grants, and never rerouting that money to other grant opportunities, the Trump administration violated the constitution by not spending money in ways Congress specifically required through laws it passed on how research funds should be used.

CalMatters emailed the U.S. Department of Justice, which acts as the legal defense for the federal agencies, on July 16 to ask whether it agrees that the federal grant-making agency stipulations mean the Trump administration violated the constitutional rights of researchers. A spokesperson for the Justice Department didn’t respond by publication time.

History of lawsuit

The judge in this case, Rita F. Lin, has repeatedly sided with the UC professors and issued several preliminary injunctions forcing the federal agencies to restore the grants while she reviews the full merits of the case. This includes the restoration of hundreds of grants at UCLA that the Trump administration sought to suspend over its allegations that the university tolerated antisemitism and permitted transgender women to compete on women’s sports teams.

Those allegations were also the subject of a demand from the White House for UCLA to pay $1.2 billion or experience an additional cascade of research freezes. However, months before President Donald Trump sought that settlement, UCLA took steps to address antisemitism on campus, including commissioning a task force to recommend ways to create a more welcoming environment for Jewish students.

Lin, a Biden appointee, faulted the administration for disregarding those efforts by UCLA in a preliminary injunction for a different but related lawsuit. The Trump administration’s justification for terminating the grants did not “mention the remedial steps UCLA had already taken to address the issues described,” Lin wrote.

Lawyers for professors in the Thakur case now want Lin to make a final ruling, rather than a preliminary one, ordering the grants to be restored. Even if that were to happen, the federal agencies could decide to appeal Lin’s ruling to a higher court.

The stakes are “huge,” lawyers for the professors in the Thakur case wrote. If the White House is “allowed to terminate this funding, the researchers, graduate students, and program staff that relied on the grants to pursue their lives’ work will all suffer significant damage to their reputations and careers.”

The lawyers warn of lifesaving cures that will never be developed, new understandings of diseases that will go unexplored and the decline in the country’s global standing as an international juggernaut in publicly funded research.

Using keywords to target disfavored grants

The agencies admitted to using keywords in various ways, according to a CalMatters review of the new court filings.

The Department of Transportation identified six grants for projects worth about $42 million to terminate because they sought “transportation equity,” prioritized “disadvantaged communities,” or focused on “diversifying the transportation workforce” and “equity.”

The termination of three of those grants led by a UC Davis professor resulted in 77 researchers abandoning 79 in-progress projects. Lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote that the project leaders were also forced to lay off or scramble to replace funding for more than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants.

The National Institutes of Health admitted to using an internal search tool to flag UC grants that mentioned “health equity,” "work force diversity," "structural racism," and "sexual orientation." The NIH alone suspended or canceled more than 1,000 UC grants, including nearly 700 at UCLA, related to vaccines, cancer research and disparities in health outcomes.

That figure is newly disclosed in a court filing — last year, UCLA indicated that closer to 500 NIH grants were terminated. The health research agency also declared that it’s possible that DOGE, the short-lived federal office that billionaire Elon Musk led in 2025, used AI to target grants for termination.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote to the judge that these admissions show the agencies “identified the viewpoints they wanted to suppress, searched the grants they funded for those that expressed those viewpoints, and terminated those grants on that basis.” That violates the researchers’ First Amendment rights, the lawyers wrote.

The Environmental Protection Agency, one of the named agencies in the suit, is in the process of settling with lawyers for the UC professors to avoid further litigation.

A separate federal district judge in Massachusetts last week dealt the Trump administration a blow in its ability to terminate grants and withhold federal funding. The White House relied on a legal phrase in many of its funding cancellations — “no longer effectuates . . . agency priorities.”

California and 22 other states sued, arguing that there’s no law or right for the federal government to cancel funding based on new program goals and White House desires after the grants were already awarded.

The judge agreed.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.