A former state assistant attorney general is unhappy with her former employers.

Deborah M. DeMack, now in private practice in Albuquerque, is accusing Attorney General Gary K. King and his chief deputy, Albert J. Lama, of age and sex discrimination and defamation of character.

DeMack says in a lawsuit that she joined the Consumer Protection Division of the state Attorney General's Office in 2002.

Then-Attorney General Patricia Madrid appointed DeMack legislative liaison and promoted her in 2003. DeMack's performance was recognized with several salary increases, according to the complaint for damages DeMack filed on her own behalf Wednesday in state District Court.

The complaint says things began to change in January 2007 when King took over the Attorney General's Office and hired Karen Meyers as Consumer Protection Division director. Meyers "generally avoided interaction" with DeMack and was "often abrupt and impatient" with her, while being "friendly, warm, and responsive" to male colleagues and subordinates, says the complaint. Meyers is not named as a defendant.

On June 24, 2008, DeMack was fired with no notice or warning, and was replaced with a younger male attorney with less experience who began at $55,788 year, compared to the $59,558 DeMack was making, the complaint says. It says the average salary for male attorneys of the same or less experience as DeMack at the time was $65,260.

The complaint says at least 10 other women at the Attorney General's Office have been fired, threatened with firing or forced to resign since January 2007. Since January 2008, two female employees of the division have resigned "rather than continue to work in what each regarded as a hostile work environment given Meyers' discriminatory behavior and treatment of female subordinates," says the complaint.

The complaint also says 47 men and women, all over 40 years old, left the Attorney General's Office during King's first 20 months in office. DeMack is over 40, it says.

DeMack specifically accuses Chief Deputy Attorney General Lama of breaching her severance agreement regarding her accumulated leave days and 160 hours of pay. She accuses the office in general of slandering and libeling her by responding to her complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that she had been counseled and disciplined, when she had not.

"We do consider this a personnel matter that will be resolved in our favor," said King spokesman Phillip Sisneros. "We don't believe there was any wrongdoing on our part."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.