© Lauren Justice / The Flint Journal'No black nurses' lawsuit: a second nurse in Flint, Mich. claimed she saw a note in the Hurley Medical Center's neonatal care unit that said African American nurses were not to assist a particular patient's baby. Here, Rev. Charles E. William II speaks to the press outside Hurley Feb. 19.
Just days after news spread of a nurse at a Flint, Mich. hospital who had filed a lawsuit claiming her employer granted a patient's request not to have African-American nurses treat his baby, a second nurse has corroborated the claim in another lawsuit.
The nurse, Carlotta Anderson, claims in her lawsuit that a notice was posted on the assignment clipboard in the neonatal unit of the Hurley Medical Center on Oct. 31 that said, "No African American nurse to take care of baby."
Anderson's lawyer, Tom Pabst, tells The Christian Science Monitor that the notice is unambiguous discrimination.
"There's no misunderstanding. They gave an instruction. No black hand touches a white baby," he says.
News of the first lawsuit, filed by Tonya Battle, spread, and Al Sharpton's National Action Network held a press conference Feb. 19 in front of Hurley Medical Center to protest the notice and demand accountability.
Hurley Medical Center CEO Melany Gavulic, speaking with reporters at the press conference, denied that Hurley granted the patient's request to have only white nurses take care of his newborn, according to The Flint Journal.
"We value the support of the patients who entrust us with their care and the dedication of our physicians and staff," she told reporters. "This includes nurse Battle and her quarter century of professionalism and dedication."
Hurley Medical Center was not immediately available for comment.
Despite Gavulic's denial that such a request was granted, Pabst tells the Monitor that there is photographic proof of the notice -- it was broadcast by WJRT-ABC12 -- and for the two weeks it was posted it was a topic of conversation among the all nurses stationed there.
"The white nurses showed it to Carlotta and said, 'Can you believe this?'" Pabst says. "The white nurses were shocked. They're colleagues."
The man who the two nurses claim made the request is himself a conversation starter. According to Battle's lawsuit, the man rolled up his sleeve and showed a supervisor what was believed to be a swastika tattooed on his arm.
Some comments on the Flint Journal story questioned whether or not the man has the right as a patient to decide who cares for his baby.
According to court documents from a similar case in Indiana, a black nursing assistant in 2010 filed a lawsuit against her previous employer, Plainfield Healthcare Center, after being told in writing that "no blacks" assistants were to enter a patient's room as a result of that patient's request.
The Indiana lawsuit made its way to federal court, where Plainfield was found to have made a racially hostile environment.
The issue at Hurley Medical Center is not one of patient's rights, says Rev. Charles E. Williams II, president of Al Sharpton's National Action Network's chapter in Michigan, but of discrimination.
"I can choose whether I want a man or a woman. I don't want a man to touch my child or a woman in her private section. We're not talking about gender," he says. "We're talking about the content of character versus skin color. This is 2013, you tell me, how does skin color separate us from how we serve each other?"
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Reader Comments
and then let us invite in the infamous 'family services' crew to 'clean up'. Isn't this how problems grow, when things aren't 'nipped in the bud'.
i d be kicking ass too. what deadbeats! hgs
This is a sticky and tenuous path when taken. How is gender any different from color as a choice? Here we have a situation that smacks of a red herring. The first amendment and free will gives a person the legal right to state something that is abhorrent to the majority of the population. This is always where freedom becomes sticky and the legal subtleties makes it even more unclear. Since there is no right or wrong it is just about choices and decisions. If a person is paying for services and chooses to qualify the request in manner that to some would be considered inappropriate, does this negate the idea of a verbal contract for some form of service. If the vendor was a private organization, ie. church etc then this choice of not to provide a service has been judged to be appropriate. Separation of church and state, convenient ! But if the customer is making the request, then somehow it doesn't have the validity of a church. In effect a church has more freedom than an individual consumer. The devil is in the details and creating a logic path that respects free will is not easy. In the final review there are two entities involved in any agreement for services or goods. Both sides can have distinctly different opinions on what's right or wrong but in the end an agreement is made as to the availability of services or goods. If the hospital in question was a private entity with the same freedoms as a "Church" then the decision to provide the services was appropriate and no harm was experienced by any employees as a result of their decision. Offending the moral sensibility of the employees does not result in any tangible harm that would support legal action. Your could argue that a different standard applies to publicly supported organizations that provide services and they are required to be colorblind and genderblind regarding services.