A graduate of an employer-sponsored home health aide training course was a Spanish-speaking recent immigrant from Ecuador.

   The aide was fired soon after going out on her first assignment, and she filed charges of national origin discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and with the state human rights commission. Both agencies ruled she had a legitimate grievance. She then elected to sue in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, but the court sided with her former employer.

   The court agreed it is every court’s responsibility to be highly suspicious whenever a minority employee is singled out by an employer for adverse treatment. However, in this case, of more than twenty Hispanic persons in this aide’s home health training class, only she had experienced any problems. The court further ruled that dereliction of a caregiver’s responsibilities toward a vulnerable patient and falsification of employee time records are legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for taking disciplinary action. Sanyer vs. Agency, 971 F. Supp. 86 (E.D.N.Y., 1997).