Recent Rulings:
A federal judge in Connecticut recently refused to dismiss the case of an employee who sued for pregnancy discrimination. In this case, the employee, an attorney, was terminated after returning from her maternity leave. Her employer terminated her employment while she was on her leave, and after she begged for her job back, the managing partner of the law firm referred to her as "pumper girl" because she used a breat pump and encouraged her to find a job somewhere else. The employee was eventually demoted to independent contractor status and quit because her salary was greatly reduced and she felt humiliated. The court held that she had presented enough evidence to go to trial. Lafferty v. Owens, Schine, & Nicola, P.C., 2012 WL 162332 (D. Conn. January 18, 2012) (Kravitz, J.).
A judge in New Haven recently allowed an African-American doctor to got forward with his claim of race discrimination against Yale New Haven Hospital. In that case, the plaintiff alleged that his residency was terminated because of his race and gender- he alleged that he was given failing grades for surgery even though he was never assigned any surgeries, and that he was terminated without any warnings as described in the employee handbook. The court dismissed his gender claim, but upheld his race discrimination claim on the basis of a statistic showing that African-American males were terminated from the program at a rate of 67%, mush more than the rate for white doctors. Craig v. Yale University School of Medicine, 2011 WL 6748515 (D. Conn. Dec. 22, 2011).
A Connecticut federal judge recently denied the State of Connecticut's motion for summary judgment in a racial discrimination failure to promote case. In denying summary judgment, the judge found that there was enough evidence to satisfy a prima facie case of discrimination where no African American applicant was promoted to any of 3 available positions despite the facts that: the plaintiff had the most experience of all the applicants, one of the other African American candidates was the second highest scoring applicant, and 4 out of 9 applicants were African American. The judge noted that a plaintiff suing for racial discrimination need only meet a de minimis burden at the prima facie stage of the case because "in reality...direct evidence of discrimination is difficult to find precisely because its practitioners deliberately try to hide it." Johnson v Connecticut, 798 F. Supp. 2d 379 (D. Conn. July 20, 2011).
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appellate court in Connecticut) recently approved a finding that punitive damages were appropriate for an employee who had suffered discrimination on the basis of his race. Punitive damages are awarded to plaintiffs when the employer's conduct is so bad that punishment is appropriate. In this case, the employer had failed to investigate the plaintiff's claim of discrimination, and there was evidence presented at trial that other African-American employees had been targeted as a result of their race. The appeals court did find that the punitive damages award of $1.6 million dollars was unconstitutionally excessive. Thomas v. iStar Financial, Inc., 652 F.3d 141 (2d Cir. July 22, 2011).
The Connecticut Supreme Court recently ruled (in a case handled by Attorney Hayber) that the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act (CFEPA) requires employers to accommodate disabled employees. While the language of that statute did not expressly include this requirement, the Court interpreted it as though it did so as to advance the broad remedial goal of the statute. The Court further held that employers must engage employees in an interactive process, or discussion, about the disability in order to comply with their obligations under the law and may not discharge an employee without first doing so. Finally, the court held that employer policies that require that employees be fully healed before returning to work after an injury are illegal to the extent that they prevent disabled workers who could be accommodated from returning to work. Curry v. Allan S. Goodman, Inc., 286 Conn. 390.
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