COSTA MESA – While K.D. Hughes toiled away as a mail clerk, she dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

Then she went postal – in a legal way – not only fighting and winning her own pro per discrimination case against the U.S. Postal Service, but picking up a law degree along the way.

Hughes, 33, is fresh out of Whittier Law School and, as of last week, a member of the California Bar.

And thanks to her experience, she has a passion for employment law and fighting job discrimination.

“I was treated in a manner that was not only disrespectful and immoral, but blatantly illegal,” said Hughes, who lives in Costa Mesa. “I felt like I had an obligation to fight this, in my mind, because there are so many people who are going through similar situations who aren't in a position to do anything about it.”

Hughes filed complaints with the Department of Labor alleging the postal service wrongfully canceled her disability benefits for a shoulder injury she claimed she got on the job handling mail.

She also contended she was wrongfully refused a limited-duty assignment after returning to work from a leave of absence. After filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Hughes alleged discrimination on grounds that the postal service refused to accommodate her disability.

Hughes said she spent more than two years collecting evidence and studying in law libraries, researching statutes and case law. She also took photos of heavy parcels on scales for evidence, kept a detailed journal of alleged legal violations, photocopied post office policies and enlisted co-workers as potential witnesses.

The payoff came in September, when a three-judge Department of Labor panel granted Hughes back pay for benefits.

Along with finding in her favor, the panel granted a request she made: to require the postal service to institute a nationwide, anti-discrimination program for its employees.

The postal service has appealed the rulings. .A decision is pending before an administrative three-judge appellate panel in Washington D.C.

Hughes victory is rare, employment disability lawyers say, because cases against the U.S. Postal Service are extremely difficult to fight, even if a plaintiff has representation.

Michelle Reinglass, a Laguna Hills sole practitioner who specializes in employment law, said all pro per plaintiffs have it tough, but going up against federal agencies is particularly grueling.

“Many lawyers make strategic mistakes and miss crucial deadlines, [but] persons in pro per run a larger risk of failing to take necessary steps, making errors and missing deadlines,” Reinglass said. “Also, judges and jurors may tend to give them less credence... [They may be] under the perception that since no lawyer wold take the case, it must not have merit.”

Hughes started working for the post office in 1986.

She said she developed chronic bursitis two years later from handling mail on the job and got approval from the Department of Labor for disability benefits. She also got approval to work a limited-duty position.

In 1995, Hughes hurt her back in a car accident and spent 16 weeks in a body cast. While out on leave, Hughes said, the Department of Labor sent a letter mandating she get her shoulder examined by one of its physicians. She declined, reasoning that she was not required to because she was on sabbatical from work to recover from her accident.

When Hughes returned to work after taking more time off for her father's death, she said, the “limited duty” position she had to accommodate her shoulder injury had been eliminated.

Hughes eventually got her shoulder examined by a Department of Labor physician, but the doctor reported she was “capable of performing the duties os her pre-[shoulder]-injury job.”

Hughes contended the finding was inaccurate because the physician was relying on outdated examination notes and had not reviewed her pre-injury job description.

As a result of the physicians report, Hughes said she was placed in a position that required her to lift heavy parcels, which aggravated her shoulder.

“I was required to lift 400 pounds in a matter of a half-hour to 45 minutes, and this exceeded my limitations,” she said.

Her disability benefits were then terminated, after which Hughes said her hours were cut from 35 to 12 hours per week.

Hughes ended up amending her EEOC complaint to include retaliation.

She alleged that her supervisors fabricated offenses to build up her discipline record and that she was reprimanded for requesting a copy of the post office's legal manual to study.

In addition, there were times she says she was not allowed to go to the restroom alone, or eat or drink at her desk – while other employees could.

A spokesman for the Phoenix Post Office declined to comment on Hughes' allegations or the court hearings in which they were addressed, citing the pending litigation.

“The litigation is still in the appeals process, so it would be inappropriate to address it at this time,” said Brian Sperry of the post office's public affairs and communications office.

Hughes said she tried her own case because she couldn't afford a lawyer. Also, she said, several attorneys simply refused to get involved.

“I was told that the postal service doesn't follow the Code of Civil Procedure and is notorious for prolonging litigation and not complying with discovery requests,” she added.

“[Lawyers] told me the case wasn't worth their time, so I took it on myself,” she said.

It was in 1997, as she was preparing her discrimination case to be heard by an administrative EEOC judge, that Hughes left the post office and moved to California for law school, flying back to Phoenix for court hearings.

She contends the postal service's lawyers tried to sabotage her case – continuing hearings after she'd already flown in to attend them and ignoring her requests for discovery.

Drusilla D. Wylie, counsel for the postal service in Phoenix, referred comment to Sperry, the agency spokesman, who declined to comment.

Now, while awaiting the outcome of the postal service's appeal of the decisions, Hughes has been observing trials and legal procedures in the courtroom of Orange County Superior Court Judge Thierry Colaw's.

She's one of just a handful of law students named as an American Board of Trial Advocates scholar.

Interview with KD Hughes

What interested you in law? Did you have a life before becoming a plaintiff employment lawyer? If so, what was it?

My personality has always been strong; my beliefs and passions even stronger. Of course, the two are intertwined but, at least for me, my predisposition to a hypersensitivity to injustice was what most severely impacted the formulation of my personality from the time I was a small child.

Because, being witness to injustice perpetuated on others caused me a great deal of personal strife, throughout my younger life, I often found myself in the middle of turmoil that was not my own to bare.

As I matured, I began to realize that despite my distain for structural and systemic oppression, the only way I could truly advocate for those who were incapable of confronting injustice on their own was to entrench myself into one of the very systems which has long perpetuated the problems it was created to address—the judicial system. However, because I left home at a very young age, prior to even attending high school, I never saw myself as someone who could fulfill life’s destiny.

I obtained a job with the United States Postal Service at the age of 18. But, it was not long before I learned what my elders meant when they spoke of feeling trapped by the “golden handcuffs” of federal employment.

After breaking my back in an auto accident, my identity transformed into a “dispensable expenditure on the federal budget.” Whether it was my inability to ignore injustice or my greatly reduced physical productivity which perpetuated the plight that was to follow, no one can really say. However, it was because of the discrimination that I experienced as a result of these events, that I finally chose to break free from those proverbial handcuffs and attend law school. From the moment that decision was made, my life has been dedicated to fulfilling the destiny written for me.

Do you have a life besides law, and if so, what is it? What are you most passionate about outside of your employment law practice?

Because I cannot seem to embrace an appreciation for simplicity, I have struggled with finding things outside of my practice that offer the type of substantive fulfillment I long to experience. But, the logic and structure required by my practice has, at times, become all consuming.

Thus, I have found a few things in life which provide me with some semblance of emotional balance. The first of which is through creative expression and, the other, through investing in the intimacy my relationships merit, whether those relationships be with family, friends or the rescue Labrador I recently adopted.

I have always said: “It is the little things in life that matter.” And, each time I step back from a piece of art I have completed or watch my dog smile in a way that she has not before, I realize just how the “little things” serve to encapsulate the profound meaning to be found in life.

What are you most passionate about in your employment law practice? Since you’ve been in practice, what is your most memorable moment?

So many times, clients come into our office with a sense of despair and hopelessness that permeates every aspect of their being. I have looked into clients eyes as they tell their story. The impact of feeling impotent to take action plays out on their face like a nightmare being portrayed through a B rated movie. Often times the stories are surreal but, having experienced it myself in my former life as a postal employee, I am compelled to continue listening. Experiencing this, one intuitively knows that the person who sits before you at that very moment is only part of the person who they and their family once knew.

As attorneys we must realize our responsibility to clients lies much less in making their life financially easier than it does in our ability to give them back some of the power that has been stolen, by holding those accountable for the theft, and by summoning scrutiny from their peers and the public. Attorneys who place these aspects of their craft in the highest order of priority are those who force the practice of law to come closer to fulfilling its intended purpose. But this requires personal passion, a drive that far exceeds a desire for the “finer” things in life.

As we become the voice of the mute, we are given the gift of watching human beings transform into more than they were, even before their legal struggles began. It is through their own act of standing tall and fighting back that this transformation begins. So, it is not so much those greatest moments of victory that are closely held in the memories of this litigator. Rather, it is those moments when, because of my mere presence in a client’s life and my willingness to stand as an equal partner beside them in their plight, that will always be held in the highest regard for me.

To this end, seeing a light that once was not there, a smile that could not before have been mustered and the sincerity in a client’s “thank you” that marks the greatest moments in this litigators practice.

Tell us something about you (that you’re willing to share) that is not common knowledge.

Those who choose to sum me up by what they perceive as a “hard exterior,” disavow a quintessential understanding of humanity. I am an extremely caring and sensitive woman who long ago made the conscious choice to live her life without fear, to embrace truth with abandon despite any cost that may be associated with doing so. And, although this too may, at times, be perceived as a degree of egocentric self righteousness, those who know me, also know that with every free expression, comes another of my truths. Who I am and what I believe today will undoubtedly change with time, experience and my achievement of greater levels of self awareness.