With the support of a state human rights panel, an Augusta woman, Angela S. Johnson, filed a disability discrimination lawsuit against Molina Healthcare in federal court. As part of her lawsuit, she is seeking “back wages and other damages as well as an order forcing Molina Information Systems LLC to provide civil rights training for human resources workers and supervisors on provisions around disability employment discrimination.” But what happened? What kind of disability discrimination did Johnson face?
With the support of a state human rights panel, an Augusta woman, Angela S. Johnson, filed a disability discrimination lawsuit against Molina Healthcare in federal court. As part of her lawsuit, she is seeking “back wages and other damages as well as an order forcing Molina Information Systems LLC to provide civil rights training for human resources workers and supervisors on provisions around disability employment discrimination.” But what happened? What kind of disability discrimination did Johnson face?
It started back on October 10, 2014, when Johnson was fired “from her job in the Augusta office of Molina.” According to Johnson, she believed she was fired as a result of requesting “intermittent leave under the Family Medical Leave Act when she suffered a recurrence of symptoms of Meniere’s disease Oct. 4, 2014.” According to the lawsuit, Johnson is accusing Molina Healthcare of “disability discrimination, denial of reasonable accommodations, retaliation and intentional and willful interference of employee’s rights and retaliation for requesting medical leave…as well as failure to provide personnel file and written statement of reasons for termination.”
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It’s important to note, however, that before she filed the lawsuit against the company, Johnson and her attorneys, Carol Garvan and Valerie Wicks, attempted to resolve the issue with Molina Healthcare and it’s subsidiary, Molina Information Systems LLC, outside of the courtroom. Unfortunately, those efforts failed.
Initially, before Johnson even filed the lawsuit, she “took her claims of unlawful employment discrimination to the Maine Human Rights Commission,” which, in August 2017, “voted 4-0 to find reasonable grounds to believe she was subject to both illegal disability discrimination and retaliation when she was fired after she requested an accommodation for an illness.” For those who don’t know, symptoms of Meniere’s disease can include everything from vertigo and hearing loss to ringing in the ear. In fact, her symptoms were so severe that her “healthcare provider filled out FMLA certification paperwork (which) restricted Ms. Johnson to ‘work from home until her current flare resolved,’” according to the lawsuit.
Upon asking for the FMLA leave, Garvan claim’s Molina immediately asked for Johnson’s “FMLA certificate paperwork, then separately for (Americans with Disabilities Act) paperwork to support a reasonable accommodation.” She added, “they asked her to provide that paperwork within three weeks, but the day after they fired her by phone.”
Before being fired, Johnson worked for Molina Healthcare for “four years, most recently as manager of operations, and prior to that for the predecessor firm, Unisys Corp., for eight years.”
When discussing the lawsuit, Laura Murray, in charge of handling Molina Healthcare’s media relations, said in an email that “it’s company policy not to comment on pending litigation so we’re unable to provide any additional information.”
Sources:
Augusta worker sues Molina Healthcare over disability discrimination claim
Former Molina worker sues claiming disability discrimination
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