Portland District 1 City Councilor Candace Avalos listens during a meeting at Portland City Hall on Nov. 12, 2025 in Portland, Ore.
Eli Imadali / OPB
A former staffer for Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos claims she was fired in retaliation for reporting sexual harassment at work. And she’s planning to sue.
In a legal notice sent to the city Friday, an attorney representing Sabina Urdes signaled her intent to file a lawsuit due to the “financial harm and severe emotional upset” caused by working under Avalos.
Avalos declined to comment on the allegations, citing the fact that it involves confidential HR information.
Avalos hired Urdes, a longtime advocate for East Portland, as a council aide in August 2025. She was fired in March.
According to Urdes, the firing was directly linked to her filing a sexual harassment complaint against a colleague. Her attorney, Christopher Lundberg, writes that Avalos’ operations coordinator asked Urdes about her sexual orientation and “routinely” commented on Urdes’ appearance, among other things.
Urdes filed a sexual harassment complaint with the city’s human resources department earlier this year, according to the notice. Then Avalos allegedly began treating her differently.
“Shortly thereafter, Councilor Avalos was openly hostile toward Ms. Urdes at a gala event and refused to speak to her,” Lundberg writes.
Lundberg alleges that Avalos’ chief of staff, Gloria Ochoa-Sandoval, then publicly talked about Urdes’ complaint at a March 12 staff meeting.
“She went on to say that staff need to ‘watch what you wear’ to avoid inviting sexual comments or attention, that staff should not be friends or drink to together [sic] because ‘everything can be interpreted as harassment,’” Lundberg writes.
Urdes filed a retaliation complaint with the city’s human resources department the next day, the notice states. She also requested to take a mental health-related leave of absence.
Avalos fired Urdes a week later. According to Lundberg, the reasoning was that Urdes was “difficult to work with.”
Afterwards, Lundberg said, Urdes heard from local nonprofit leaders that Avalos was making calls disparaging Urdes, “actively undermining Ms. Urdes’ ability to get re-employed.”
Lundberg said Urdes plans to file a civil lawsuit against Avalos and the city for violating a variety of workplace laws, including retaliation for reporting sexual harassment and requesting medical leave.
The legal notice comes a month after another former employee of Avalos filed a similar lawsuit against her. Alagia Amber Conwell-Felix previously worked at Verde, an environmental nonprofit Avalos led before winning her council seat in 2025. Conwell-Felix accused Avalos of firing her in retaliation after Conwell-Felix raised concerns about racial discrimination with the organization’s human resources department. Conwell-Felix is asking for $999,000 in damages.
