Pena, a U.S. citizen who can trace his ancestry to Mexico, had protested his treatment before, but never as strenuously as after that incident. He said his supervisors did little, if anything, to end the harassment.

On June 22 of this year, an Ingham County jury agreed – saying Pena’s supervisors were aware of the abuse and failed to adequately address the situation.

The Ingham County Road Commission plans to appeal the verdict, but Ingham County officials would not comment on details.

Plenty of other cases are pending nationwide. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported a backlog of 40,234 discrimination cases at the end of 1999. Even though that is a 15-year low, agency officials said it has dwindled primarily because of a new mediation system that is pushing cases along more quickly.

“People who believe discrimination is a relic of history in this country have their heads in the sand,” said Michael Steinberg, legal director of the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union based in Detroit. “It is a pervasive problem on many levels.”

Pena still works at the Ingham County Road Commission’s Mason garage, where he’s been employed since 1987. He said many of his co-workers have bee supportive, but a few have verbally harassed him since his second week on the job. Now, those who abused him rarely talk to him at all.

The 5-foot-8-inch, 240 youth sports coach said he sued only because he felt he had exhausted his efforts to address the situation within the Ingham County Road Commission.

The Ingham County jury awarded Pena $650,000 for damages he has already suffered, and another $650,000 in anticipation of future damages. The verdict has not yet been finalized as a judicial order, and will be the subject of a July 19 hearing before Ingham County Judge Carolyn Stell, which is standard procedure.

“There are legal matters still pending, so we’re running everything through our legal counsel,” said Joe Pulver, Ingham County’s director of operations.

Other Ingham County co-workers on Friday either declined to comment or could not be reach for comment.

Larry Salstrom, an attorney representing the Ingham County Road Commission, said an appeal of the judgment is planned.

Both Pulver and Salstrom declined to discuss specifics of the case, But the suit may have contributed to some policy changes at the Ingham County Road Commission.

Several months after Pena’s suit was filed in May of 1998, the Ingham County Road Commission adopted a code of conduct for its employees. The document states employees are expected to “treat the public, their co-workers, supervisors and contractors with courtesy and respect. The code also details “inappropriate conduct” such as obscene language, racial slurs and harassment. Employees who violate the code, it reads, are “subject to progressive disciplinary action up to and including discharge.”

Ingham County Road Commission would not say this week whether any employees have been disciplined as a result of the Pena case.

Pena said he was routinely cursed and called racial slurs, sometimes when supervisors were present.

In 1997, according to documents, a white co-worker assigned to a job with Pena said to a supervisor while in Pena’s presence: “I’m sick of this. You gotta send a white man out with a Mexican to do the job right.”

After the early 1998 meeting in which a co-worker said Pena should be shot, Pena asked supervisors to end the abuse.

They did nothing, he says.

The same co-worker threated a white supervisor a few weeks later and was fired, but that dismissal was related to the threatening of the supervisor, not Pena, according to Pena’s court complaint.

Pena said a supervisor told him: