The U.S. twice sued Meridian-based Jacksons for discrimination. Here’s what happened
Meridian-based Jackson Energy has agreed to pay $158,000 to a former dispatcher to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The agreement is the second time this year that Jackson and its sister company, Jacksons Food Stores, have settled discrimination lawsuits by the EEOC.
Jackson Energy fired Penny Wightman in November 2015 while she was recovering from surgery after breaking her wrist. Metal rods, plates and screws were used to realign Wightman’s wrist bone, and she had to undergo physical therapy.
A week after the surgery, Wightman returned to work with restrictions. A few weeks after Wightman trained another employee to handle her duties, Jacksons forced her to go onto unpaid medical leave until she could return to work without restrictions. She was fired after she had exhausted all of her leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.
During the two years Wightman worked for Jackson Energy, the company “recognized her as an excellent and valued employee,” the EEOC said in a news release.
“I loved my job and took a lot of pride in being a dispatcher for Jacksons,” Wightman said in the release. “I wanted desperately to return to work, so when Jacksons refused to consider reasonable accommodations that might have allowed me to perform my duties and instead later fired me, I was devastated.”
Wightman asked the company to provide her with speech recognition software that would have allowed her to use her voice rather than her injured hand to input information into her computer, an essential part of her job. Jacksons refused, the agency said.
The EEOC argued in documents filed in U.S. District Court in Boise that firing Wightman because of her disability violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. The law requires an employer to provide reasonable accommodation for an injured worker unless it would pose an undue hardship.
In the settlement, Jackson Energy did not admit violating the act. The company agreed to train managers and employees on the ADA, reasonable accommodations and the complaint process. The company will also post a notice about the settlement and employees’ rights under the act.
“I’m glad that with this settlement, Jacksons will implement changes along with training so that hopefully this type of discrimination will not happen again to other qualified workers,” Wightman said.
In August, Jacksons Food Stores agreed to pay $88,000 and to hire Nathanial Prugh, a deaf man who applied for a customer service position at a Jacksons store in Sammamish, Washington, east of Seattle. The EEOC had sued Jacksons on his behalf.
When a store manager contacted Prugh to schedule an interview, he informed the manager he was deaf and would require an American Sign Language interpreter for the interview. The manager denied the request for an interpreter and rescinded the offer for an interview.
Tamsen Leachman, a Portland attorney who represented Jacksons in both cases, did not return phone calls on Friday and Monday.
Jackson Energy and Jacksons Food Stores were both founded by John Jackson and are operated out of the same Meridian office.
This story was originally published December 24, 2018 at 12:50 PM.
