ORLANDO – A longtime Florida assistant state attorney claims she was forced to resign from her position after she was discriminated against because of her age and later her cancer diagnosis.
Plaintiff Laura Vaughn-Bosco filed her suit in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division. The Office of the State Attorney, Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, is the named defendant.
“Defendant’s articulated reasons for the adverse employment actions described above are false and pretextual,” her 39-page complaint states.
“The temporal proximity between Plaintiff’s requests for medical leave, her disability, her age, her requests for accommodation, and her protected complaints, on the one hand, and the adverse employment actions, on the other, demonstrate discriminatory and retaliatory motive.”
Vaughn-Bosco alleges the office interfered with, restrained, and denied the exercise of her rights under the federal Family Medical Leave Act; it retaliated against her for exercising her FMLA rights; and it failed to provide reasonable accommodation and engage in any good-faith interactive process.
She contends the office, in direct response to her protected activity, retaliated against her by permanently stripping her of her Juvenile Division Chief position, assigning her to an unfamiliar and physically demanding role, ignoring her physician’s written request for workload reduction, increasing her workload after receipt of the physician’s note, and constructively discharging her.
She also alleges the office discriminated against her on the basis of her disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it discriminated against her on account of her age in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act by replacing her with a “substantially younger and less qualified” employee.
Vaughn-Bosco contends the office also retaliated against her by permanently stripping her of her position, assigning her to an unfamiliar and physically demanding role, assigning her additional duties, and ignoring her written requests for reassignment.
According to her complaint, she was employed with the office since March 1993 – more than 30 years of dedicated public service, she notes.
Prior to joining the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, she served as an assistant state attorney in the Seventh Judicial Circuit in March 1987.
In October 1993, Vaughn-Bosco was promoted to Juvenile Division Chief for Seminole County.
“In this role, Plaintiff built exceptional relationships with all juvenile justice stakeholders, including law enforcement, the judiciary, the Department of Juvenile Justice, and the defense bar,” her complaint notes.
She points out she has never been disciplined and has “consistently performed her duties within and above the legitimate expectations” of the office.
Starting in 2022 or 2023, she claims she was subjected to a pattern of age-based discriminatory conduct, including demeaning remarks and repeated humiliation at office functions.
Despite her repeated complaints to Chief Assistant State Attorney Stacey Salmons, Vaughn-Bosco alleges the conduct was permitted to continue, including while she was out on medical leave being treated for cancer.
On July 8, 2024, Vaughn-Bosco was hospitalized following a medical episode that led to her lung cancer diagnosis.
Shortly after her hospitalization, she claims she requested FMLA paperwork from HR Director Marianne Reynolds on multiple occasions, including in writing by text message.
However, the paperwork was never provided to her, she alleges.
“Reynolds instead told Plaintiff she had ‘plenty of sick leave’ and not to worry about FMLA protection, thereby discouraging Plaintiff from exercising her FMLA rights,” her lawsuit states.
Between July 2024 and October 2025, Vaughn-Bosco underwent extensive testing, multiple minor surgical procedures, chemotherapy spanning about three months, and major surgery on Dec. 26, 2024, during which about 40 percent of her left lung was removed.
She achieved cancer-free status following surgery. However, she was required to undergo a second round of chemotherapy beginning Jan. 31, 2025 and continuing through Oct. 10, 2025, administered every three weeks.
Vaughn-Bosco claims she met with Salmons and Reynolds about her return to work on Jan. 22, 2025.
Allegedly, she was told she would not return to her position as Juvenile Division Chief. Instead, she was informed she would be assigned to the newly created Early Resolution Misdemeanor, or ER, Division – “an area entirely outside her three decades of expertise,” she claims.
Soon after, she found out an attorney about 15 years younger than her was being promoted to her former position.
As the sole attorney in the ER Misdemeanor Division, Vaughn-Bosco claims she was required to handle a full docket of cases in an area of law she had never practiced, with only one week of training.
“Plaintiff was required to review approximately two hundred (200) case files per week and to appear in court five days per week, every week, covering the workload of multiple attorneys,” her lawsuit states. “Despite having undergone surgery that removed forty percent (40%) of her lung less than six weeks earlier, Plaintiff was required to carry boxes of case files to the courthouse, walking significant distances.
“These physically demanding tasks were inconsistent with Plaintiff’s post-surgical limitations and recovery needs, and Defendant provided no accommodation for her documented medical condition.”
After months in her new position, Vaughn-Bosco submitted a formal written request for reassignment to the Juvenile Division. It was dismissed, she claims.
In October 2025, her treating oncologist provided a written letter to the office requesting that Vaughn-Bosco be excused “from EXTRA work beyond her normal work duties, due to her long term medical condition,” noting that she was fatigued, had shortness of breath, and decreased lung capacity, remained on active treatment, and should “not be under any additional stress.”
“Despite this medical documentation, Defendant not only failed to reduce Plaintiff’s workload, but retaliated by assigning Plaintiff even more duties, including requiring her to cover first appearances for a colleague in a separate division and to cover additional Baker Act hearings in Longwood during her non-arraignment weeks,” her complaint states.
The move led her to file a charge of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Florida Commission on Human Rights in November 2025. But the discrimination and retaliation continued, she alleges.
Eventually, in February 2026, Vaughn-Bosco submitted her resignation, telling the office that it “did not give [her] a choice except resign.”
“Having been stripped of the position she had held for over three decades, denied any accommodation, denied the FMLA protections she repeatedly requested, and confronted with a demand that she return under conditions Defendant knew she could not meet, Plaintiff was left with no reasonable alternative but to resign,” her complaint states.
“As a direct and proximate result of Defendant’s unlawful conduct, Plaintiff has suffered and continues to suffer loss of her career and professional standing, loss of income, loss of employment and retirement benefits, loss of career advancement opportunities, jeopardy to her professional Board Certification, physical and emotional harm, mental anguish, humiliation, stress, loss of enjoyment of life, and other economic and non-economic damages.”
She seeks back pay and benefits; interest on back pay; front pay and/or lost earning capacity, including loss of pension and retirement benefits; compensatory damages; injunctive relief and reinstatement to her former position or front pay in lieu of; prejudgment interest; punitive damages; and attorney’s fees.
Chanfrau & Chanfrau of Daytona Beach is representing Vaughn-Bosco in the lawsuit.
