Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights leader who spent a lifetime fighting discrimination, quietly reached a taxpayer-funded financial settlement with a former employee who charged in a lawsuit that she suffered race, age and gender discrimination while working in Lewis' Atlanta office.

Lovelean (Love) Williams, an African American woman who worked 13 years for Lewis, said she was passed over for promotion to a job that went instead to a white male and that was paid $6,000 less than that white employee for doing the same work.

When she complained to Lewis, Williams said in court papers, she was fired —just eight months shy of retirement.

Lewis's office vigorously denied Williams' allegations. In court filings, Lewis asserted that Williams had misstated her salary and those of others in the office and that she was managed and disciplined in accordance with all personnel and equal-opportunity employment laws.

Williams, of Mableton, sought more than $600,000 in lost wages and retirement benefits as well as compensation for pain and suffering, according to the lawsuit, which was first filed in Federal Court in Georgia in August of 2006.

Lewis and Williams reached an undisclosed financial settlement in July. It's not known how much Williams was paid, but any money Lewis had to pay didn't come from his own pocket.

The settlement was paid by a so-called "Judgment Fund," a bottomless pot of tax dollars built into the federal budget to pay settlements in legal cases against the U.S. government, including discrimination lawsuits against congressmen. Government officials involved in the payment process said details of settlements with individuals, like Williams', are not released publicly.

The court documents came to light only recently when a former admirer of Lewis became disillusioned and circulated the tip after Lewis endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton, a friend, over Sen. Barack Obama, the first truly viable African American candidate for president.

Lewis has since switched his allegiance to Obama, but not before Atlanta area blacks and Democrats charged that he was losing touch with his constituents after 20 years in Congress.

The Rev. Markel Hutchins, a 30-year-old human rights activist from Atlanta, has announced that he'll challenge Lewis in the July congressional primaries —the first such opposition Lewis has faced in 10 years.

The former Lewis admirer who helped bring the lawsuit to public attention asked not to be named, fearing reprisals at his government job.

Joseph Beasley, the southern regional director for the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition who talked with Lewis on Williams' behalf, said he believes Lewis's treatment of Williams was unjust.

"We tried to press that point with Congressman Lewis —to let her retire," Beasley said. "He was the personification of everything that's bad in the workplace.

"He was just completely like, 'It's none of your business. It's being handled by the proper people,'" said Beasley.

Williams declined to comment on the lawsuit and settlement. In court documents, Williams alleged that she was repeatedly harassed by Michael Collins, Lewis' chief of staff, who she said stripped her of job duties, forced her to move to a smaller office and assigned her tasks that for medical reasons she couldn't perform —like signing 9,000 invitations by hand even though she suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome.

Though most of her complaints were against Collins, Williams asserted that Lewis knew in advance and approved of Collins' actions.

Williams said that when she went to Lewis and Collins to tell them she was filing a discrimination complaint with the House's equal employment opportunity office, she was fired.

Lewis and Collins declined to comment on the settlement, citing a confidentially agreement signed by all everyone involved.

A statement issued by Lewis's office said Lewis agreed to a settlement only to avoid an extended court battle.

"Given the lengthy nature and the expense invariably involved in litigation, the parties mutually agreed to resolve the case," the statement said.

The statement also reaffirmed Lewis's commitment to human rights.

"As his record reflects, Congressman Lewis has shown a life-long commitment to the fair and equitable treatment of all individuals, both in his legislation and in all of his staffing decisions," his office said in the statement.

For decades, congressmen could not be sued for discrimination in their offices. But lawsuits like Williams' can now force a congressman into court because of a law enacted in the 1990s, under the guidance of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, that requires congressmen to abide by the same laws enforced against other citizens.

The Judgment Fund that paid Lewis's settlement has been around since the 1950s, created by Congress to expedite settlement of lawsuits brought against the federal government. Prior to that, every settlement had to be approved individually by Congress, substantially slowing payment.

Though it's been amended over the years, the fund still has an unlimited allocation —meaning it can never run out of tax dollars.

The fund was paying an average of $1 billion a year between 2003 and July 2007, about the time Lewis settled his lawsuit, according to the latest government audits available. The fund was used to settle about 42,000 lawsuits over that nearly five-year period, ranging from defense contractor disputes to claims of discrimination by Capitol Hill aides.