The first female permanently-hired firefighting pilot employed by the state of California has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit after being fired by the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA).

Desiree Horton, a career pilot with 30 years of flying experience and 16 years of aerial firefighting experience, joined OCFA in 2019 as the agency’s first permanently employed female fire pilot. Prior to joining OCFA, she was a helicopter pilot with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), where she also was that agency’s first female fire pilot.

In the lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court, Horton’s attorneys allege that despite her experience (more than any of her male colleagues at OCFA) and despite glowing reviews from former employers and colleagues, OCFA terminated Ms. Horton after her one-year probationary period – and without the required one-year evaluation flight. The suit alleges that during her time at the OCFA, she was unfairly and discriminatorily scrutinized by the male pilots, crew chiefs, and helicopter technicians, held to unfair and higher standards than her male counterparts, deprived of training opportunities offered to the male fire pilots, and forced to work in a hostile environment.

When Ms. Horton was hired by CAL FIRE in 2014 her first posting was at Kneeland, a very small community in the northwest corner of the state about 10 air miles east of Eureka. At first she was living in the back seat of her pickup truck and later upgraded to a camper she put on the back. She would work for seven days then make the 12-hour drive back to Southern California.

The next year she transferred to the helicopter base at Prado east of Los Angeles, making it possible to sleep in her own bed every night. She expected to retire there but when an opportunity with the OCFA became available she couldn’t turn it down.

“When this opportunity presented itself it was a really tough decision,” she said. “Walking away from the growth that CAL FIRE was offering and the expansion of the department with the new ‘Hawks — it was a tough choice.” She said she likes the diversity of the mission in Orange County, including the rescues that are not as common with CAL FIRE.

In addition to working for OCFA and CAL FIRE, she previously flew helicopters for a privately owned helicopter company that had a US Forest Service firefighting contract, a  heavy lift operator, a helicopter tour company in Hawaii, and TV stations in Los Angeles.

In January, 2020 we interviewed Ms. Horton while developing an article about the OCFA: