National Origin Discrimination: Court Rules Nurse's Poor Attendance Valid Grounds For Firing

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

June 1999

  Quick Summary: One no call/no show incident is sufficient grounds to fire a registered nurse.

  If that is the employer’s policy, the policy must be applied uniformly to minorities and non-minorities.  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, MINNESOTA, 1999.

  The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota acknowledged that a registered nurse of Korean descent can sue for national-origin discrimination if she is treated differently than Caucasian nurses.

  The court went on to say that just one no call/no show incident where the nurse neglects to meet with a vulnerable home-health client is sufficient grounds to fire a registered nurse working in home health.

  However, in employment discrimination litigation the court has to look not only at how sensible a disciplinary policy is, but also at whether it is applied on a uniform basis to minorities and non-minorities alike, the court said.

  That being said, the court ruled against the Korean-American nurse. The court conceded the employer had never fired a Caucasian nurse for one no call/no show, but said all of them had completed incident-free probationary periods before their first no call/no show. The Korean-American nurse, the court said, was having difficulty with the employer’s scheduling and billing policies, and thus her no call/no show was not an isolated incident. Thompson v. Agency, 33 F. Supp. 2d 806 (D. Minn., 1999).