A Walmart employee with down syndrome is set to be paid a handsome sum by the company after her firing was deemed unlawful and against the Americans with Disabilities Act.
As CNBC reported, though she and her family tried to make things right regarding her accommodations, and even tried to get her job back, Walmart refused, and now they’ve been ordered to (quite literally) pay the price.
RELATED STORIES
Walmart must pay more than $125 million in damages in a disability discrimination lawsuit, as ruled by a Wisconsin federal court jury.
The lawsuit was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, surrounding the case of Marlo Spaeth, an employee with Down syndrome.
Spaeth had worked at the Walmart Supercenter in Manitowoc, Wisconsin for 16 years.
In the lawsuit, it was claimed that Walmart changed the schedule Spaeth had held for years. She experienced “significant difficulty” adjusting to the new schedule, and all the requests to have her schedule reverted were denied.
Despite always receiving positive performance reviews, she was fired.
Spaeth’s mother and sister tried to find a solution that would get her job back, but Walmart refused to rehire.
So, they went to the EEOC, who filed the lawsuit claiming that Spaeth’s firing violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on a person’s disability.
EEOC’s Chicago District Director Julianne Bowman wrote about the case in a press release.
“Employers, no matter how large, have an obligation under the law to evaluate the individual circumstances of employees with disabilities when considering requests for reasonable accommodations,” she said, per CNBC. “Ms. Spaeth’s request was a simple one and denying it profoundly altered her life.”
During the trial, the jury took less than four hours to reach its verdict.
They sent out a note asking if they were limited in the amount of damages they could award, which was answered with a no. So, they awarded Spaeth $150,000 for emotional pain and mental anguish and another $125 million in punitive damages.
Lawyers then told the judge that the legal maximum amount of combined compensatory and punitive damages could not exceed $300,000, so he ruled that as the amount owed.
In an interview with Bloomberg Law, Walmart spokesperson Randy Hargrove spoke on the trial.
“We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind, and we routinely accommodate thousands of associates every year. We often adjust associate schedules to meet our customers’ expectations and while Ms. Spaeth’s schedule was adjusted, it remained within the times she indicated she was available.
“We’re sensitive to this situation and believe we could have resolved this issue with Ms. Spaeth, however the EEOC’s demands were unreasonable.”
Spaeth received her justice thanks to the work of the EEOC and the insightfulness of the jury.
As the regional attorney of the EEOC’s Chicago District Office, Gregory Gochanour, said, “The jury here recognized, and apparently was quite offended, that Ms. Spaeth lost her job because of needless – and unlawful – inflexibility on the part of Walmart.”
h/t: CNBC
