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 employers 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).