Mississippi: Principal spread the word that woman had AIDS, then fired her

A manager told a woman’s co-workers that she had AIDS. The woman from Mississippi reported harassment by her co-workers and the manager decided to fire her.

Now, the company where his wife worked owes her $75,000, according to a May 14 press release from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as reported by miamiherald.com.

This settlement ends a multi-year litigation.

What happened

It all started in December 2017. The woman stated that her manager, after her sick leave, pressured her to reveal that she was born with the human immunodeficiency virus.

In turn, the manager disclosed this information to her colleagues. The woman was transferred and promoted in April 2018 to a different location within the company. Her new colleagues had heard that she had HIV. They continued to spread the confidential information and began harassing her, calling her “tainted,” according to the complaint. She was told that her diagnosis “made everyone extremely uncomfortable” and began to avoid her for fear of contracting HIV, citing that the store should be “quarantined” because of her.

Customers began learning she had HIV and asking her about her diagnosis while she was working, the complaint said.

The woman alleged that she was being harassed and told her boss that her former supervisor “should have received medical confidentiality training as he had illegally disclosed (the employee’s) confidential medical information.”

The dismissal

Disclosing an employee’s HIV status or any medical information violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the law, it is also illegal to discriminate against an employee because of a disability or to retaliate when the employee reports disability discrimination.

Her new supervisor then disciplined her, and she escalated her complaint to a regional manager, before being disciplined two more times “without proper justification,” officials said.

The company said the warnings were justified. The woman also sought out co-workers who might have witnessed the harassment and asked them to come forward, but when the company found out, she was disciplined again, federal officials said. She filed a complaint with the commission and was subsequently fired about a week after the company learned of her complaint,

The company denied the violation

The company agreed to settle but denied wrongdoing, saying it acted in good faith. “The company created and maintained a hostile work environment for the employee in question by releasing her private medical information and then failed to address the resulting harassment,” the court said.

“Instead of protecting the employee in question from harassment, the company fired her,” they added. As part of the consent decree, the company also agreed to update its policies and train its employees about disability discrimination and retaliation.