Design Star’s Mikey Verdugo suing police department for firing him over his gay porn

Design Star cast member Michael Verdugo was uninvited from the show’s reunion and fired from his job as a cop when his gay bondage porn work was revealed, and now he going to sue his former Florida police department.

The Miami Herald reports that “Hollywood police put Verdugo on administrative leave with pay” in the summer of 2008 and “[a]n investigation followed and the department fired him in January 2009 for not disclosing on his police application that he had made the porn film. An arbitrator recently upheld the termination. Now, Verdugo has asked his attorney, Alberto Milian, to file a civil lawsuit against Hollywood police for wrongful termination and discrimination.”

Of his one-time appearance in porn—Gay Porn Times has the details about it—openly gay Verdugo told the paper, “I don’t regret it. It was a time in my life that I wanted to explore. … It was all role-playing bondage. I was tied. I used handcuffs later on in my career.”