Artist who worked as Austin lifeguard cleared by EEOC to sue the city

An artist who worked as a lifeguard in Austin, Texas, has been cleared by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to sue the city, ending its review of his discrimination and retaliation charge and starting a 90-day clock to file in court.

The artist, Brandon Scott Cobb, said he will sue the City of Austin and add a First Amendment retaliation claim built around a painting he made of his supervisors, titled Bosses Eating Employees.

The EEOC’s San Antonio Field Office issued Cobb a notice on August 19 with a determination and notice of his rights while closing the charge, a copy of the letter reviewed by Urgent Matter shows.

The notice said the agency “will not proceed further with its investigation” and makes “no determination” about whether the evidence would establish a violation. It does not decide the claims either way, and states that the dismissal “does not mean the claims have no merit.”

He has 90 days from receiving the notice to file suit or lose the right to sue on the charge, the letter said. That puts his deadline in mid-November.

Cobb is a longtime Austin activist. He helped start the Texas Moratorium Network, an anti-death-penalty group, in 2000, has led it as president, and organizes its annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty at the Texas Capitol. The group has also staged juried exhibitions of art responding to capital punishment.

The artist said the charge stemmed from his work as a lifeguard at the city’s famed Barton Springs pool.

He said he and two women the city had already fired spoke to city council and reported inappropriate relationships between older managers and teenage lifeguards, some first hired at 16 and 17, along with harassment, discrimination and retaliation.

Austin lifeguards raised those claims publicly. In March 2025, KVUE reported that lifeguards told the city council that relationships between minor lifeguards and managers had been confirmed by human resources staff, who said the relationships began after the employees turned 18, and that reports of exploitation and harassment had been dismissed for years.

The lifeguards asked the city to bring in an outside law firm, KVUE reported. In a letter to the council and Mayor Kirk Watson, the Parks and Recreation Department said it would review an earlier investigation with a third party.

The Austin Monitor reported that a city auditor's report, released that May, reviewed 21 harassment investigations and found that seven were closed without interviewing named victims or other people in the complaint, and that 44% of city employees had no record of taking the required sexual harassment training.

Part-time and temporary employees were not required to take that training at all, the audit found — a gap auditors flagged for lifeguards, who they said face a higher risk of sexual harassment than other city workers.

Cobb said the city retaliated against him after he came forward. He said the aquatics director, who he said has since become an assistant parks director, accused him of posting comments online under fake names, which he denied.

He said the same supervisor complained about the painting, which he said criticized her and her boss, and that she “said Cobb claims to be an artist.”

The canvas shows a pool scene with a lifeguard on a stand, an oversized head with an open mouth swallowing a small figure, and bodies bleeding into green water. The word “DANGER” runs along the pool’s edge.

Cobb said he painted it in his sophomore year of a BFA program at the University of Texas at Austin about two years ago and included it in the 20-image portfolio that won him admission to an MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Cobb said he cited Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in his EEOC charge. He said he will add the First Amendment claim in the lawsuit and use the painting as an example.

Urgent Matter previously reported on scrutiny of political art by UT Austin officials. Records showed University of Texas at Austin leaders scrutinized an anti-fascist student art show curated by Cobb and were concerned about activities around the show.

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