Job Discrimination: For A Lawsuit A Nurse Must Show Employer Took Adverse Employment Action.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
August 1996
Quick Summary: For a court to allow an employment
discrimination lawsuit to go forward, there must be proof of adverse employment action
taken by the employer. No adverse employment action takes place when a nursing
manager is reassigned from the position of nursing manager of one hospital unit to manage
another unit, assuming she retains her title, grade, salary and benefits and has
essentially the same duties and level of responsibility. The nursing manager in question was sixty-one years old,
and was born in Puerto Rico. Her educational qualifications and work history were
excellent. The hospital’s nursing director reassigned her to
manage another unit, and filled her former position with a thirty-nine-year-old Caucasian
nursing manager, voicing a need for "new blood" to run the unit. The court found all the earmarks of a valid employment
discrimination case, except for proof of adverse employment action taken by the employer.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland recently had cause to review the law of age and national origin discrimination in employment, in a nurse manager’s suit against the hospital where she was employed.
In an employment discrimination case, the court first decides whether the employee has proof for all of these factors:
(1) The employee is a member of a legally protected group, e.g. persons over forty years of age or foreign born;
(2) The employee was the victim of adverse employment action taken by the employer;
(3) The employee was at the time meeting the employer’s legitimate expectations for job performance; and
(4) The employee was replaced with someone outside the legally protected group, e.g. a younger person or one not foreign born.
If all four of these necessary elements are proven by the employee, the employer has to come forward with a legitimate justification for its actions, such as employee incompetence or misconduct, or the court must rule in favor of the employee.
The court made note of an important point coming out of the precedents of other American courts. In age-discrimination cases, the person replacing an over-forty-year-old worker must be substantially younger than the alleged victim, for the court to find age discrimination. However, the person replacing the person over-forty does not have to be younger than forty for age discrimination to occur.
In this case, the court concluded no "adverse employment action," as defined by law, had taken place, as the alleged victim had not lost her job, title, pay or benefits, or been demoted to a job with different duties or a lesser level of responsibility. Caussade vs. Brown, 924 F. Supp. 693 (D. Md., 1996).