A judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming a woman was wrongfully fired by the Stratosphere hotel-casino in Las Vegas after enduring discrimination and retaliation based on her race and a disability.
An attorney for Alice Danielson said in her federal lawsuit she worked as a cocktail waitress at the property from October 2006 until June 2009, earning $11.63 per hour, and that as a black female she was "subjected to various forms of discrimination and unequal treatment related to her race."
These included unequal shift assignments, work hours and pay, the lawsuit charged.
Danielson also complained she suffered mental stress and anxiety related to her work, a disability she says the hotel-casino failed to provide a reasonable accommodation for.
The lawsuit indicated she was fired after clashing with management over health card and attendance issues.
Attorneys for the Stratosphere argued in a motion for dismissal that the suit should be thrown out because the federal court lacks jurisdiction over her case.
They said that’s because Danielson failed to properly pursue administrative solutions. She didn’t file a complaint with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission and in a complaint she had filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she didn’t allege claims of harassment based on race or disability, they said.
In her federal lawsuit, she also "failed to allege that similarly-situated individuals not in her protected class were treated more favorably," the Stratosphere’s attorneys said in their motion.
U.S. District Judge James Mahan agreed with the Stratosphere, signing an order May 9 dismissing the case.
"Plaintiff has not alleged that other employees with similar qualifications were treated more favorably than she," Mahan wrote in his order.
In her lawsuit, initially filed without an attorney, Danielson didn’t site racial remarks or incidents. She said she was traumatized and losing sleep because of a coworker’s suicidal and destructive thoughts and tendencies including incidents in which the coworker cut herself and the coworker "openly made comments like she fantasized about killing people in the showroom department."
But Mahan ruled Danielson failed to allege how this "disability" limited a major life activity – a fact that must be alleged under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The lawsuit is just one of scores pending in state and federal courts in Las Vegas alleging employment discrimination.
The Stratosphere, for instance, lost a motion for summary judgment in March in another lawsuit filed by dealer Minerva D. Yaba.
Yaba claims in her federal lawsuit she was subjected to sexual harassment by supervisors – claims denied by the Stratosphere.
Without ruling on the merits of her claims, U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson found Yaba "has raised genuine issues of fact that must be resolved by a fact finder" – putting the case on track towards a trial unless it’s settled.
"To be actionable, the conduct must go beyond the `merely offensive’ so that it changes the terms and conditions of the victim's job," Dawson wrote in his ruling. "The court finds that if a reasonable person believes plaintiff’s testimony, they could readily conclude that the alleged conduct was severe and pervasive enough to alter the terms and conditions of plaintiff’s employment."