Orange Twp. loses discrimination suit

DUSTIN ENSINGER

Staff Writer

A Franklin County Com­mon Pleas jury this week awarded a for­mer Orange Town­ship fire­fighter $1.7 mil­lion after find­ing she was a vic­tim of sex­ual discrimination.

Rachel Peters, a fire­fighter in the town­ship for less than a year, filed suit alleg­ing she was the vic­tim of sex­ual harass­ment dur­ing her time with the depart­ment and was fired because of her gender.

The jury, in a 7–1 vote, agreed and ordered the town­ship to pay $1.67 mil­lion to Peters for lost wages and “emo­tional pain, suf­fer­ing, incon­ve­nience and men­tal anguish.” The jury also returned a judg­ment of $75,000 against her imme­di­ate super­vi­sor, who rec­om­mended her termination.

“It’s kind of unfor­tu­nate because there are really no win­ners here,” Peters’ attor­ney, Dan Mor­darski said. “This woman just wanted to have her career.”

Peters, hired in Jan­u­ary 2007, was the only female fire­fighter in the town­ship at the time. She alleged she repeat­edly was harassed by a fel­low fire­fighter, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. She was fired less than a year later, just weeks before her pro­ba­tion­ary period ended.

The male fire­fighter allegedly used the woman’s restroom at the fire sta­tion on mul­ti­ple occa­sions, some­times with the door open. Peters claims he trans­ferred sta­tions in an effort to sleep with her and moved his sleep­ing quar­ters to the room next to hers. She also alleges he tam­pered with her per­sonal items, smelled her hair and fre­quently com­mented on her appearance.

Peters claimed she informed her super­vi­sors of the behav­ior, which they did noth­ing to stop; instead they retal­i­ated by treat­ing her dif­fer­ently than other firefighters.

John Latch­ney, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the town­ship in the case, did not return a phone call seek­ing comment.

The case is still not final­ized. By April, a judge is expected to rule on whether it’s safe for Peters to return to the fire department.

“She des­per­ately wants to be a fire­fighter,” Mor­darski said. “But there’s a lot of con­cerns about whether she can do that there and be safe.”

If the judge finds it is safe for Peters to return to the fire depart­ment, the $779,702 judg­ment for lost future wages will not be awarded to her.

The town­ship spent $77,000 in rela­tion to the case, $11,000 of which was used for an inter­nal investigation.

Accord­ing to Mor­darski, the town­ship could have avoided incur­ring any costs at all. His client, who dreamed of being a fire­fighter since a young age, sim­ply wanted her job back, he said.

“You can’t do this to women,” he said. “In our soci­ety, we kind of accept that women can be doc­tors and lawyers. But when it comes to fire­fight­ers, there’s still peo­ple that say, ‘That’s not for women.’”

Court records said Peters was allowed to file the case in Franklin County because one of the defen­dants lives there.

Posted by Dustin Ensinger on Mar 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.