For nearly 10 years, Alisha Coleman worked as a 911 dispatcher for a facility that helps people with disabilities. Coleman claims that in 2016 she lost the job that she loved after experiencing symptoms associated with premenopause. Coleman has teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union after being abruptly let go by the Bobby Dodd Institute in Fort Benning, Ga., and has filed a lawsuit against her former employer.
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Coleman says that she unexpectedly got her period, which stained an office chair. She was told that if this happened again, she would be fired. When she accidentally leaked again while on her period, she was fired for reportedly being unable to โpractice high standards of personal hygiene and maintain a clean, neat appearance while on duty,โ her complaint states, according to the New York Daily News.
โI loved my job at the 911 call center because I got to help people,โ Coleman said in a press statement posted by the ACLU, People magazine reports. โEvery woman dreads getting period symptoms when theyโre not expecting them, but I never thought I could be fired for it. Getting fired for an accidental period leak was humiliating. I donโt want any woman to have to go through what I did, so Iโm fighting back.โ
The Daily News reports that Colemanโs case was dismissed by a district court, which ruled that โpremenopause is not a condition that is protected by the law,โ but โthe ACLU of Georgia is helping Coleman to battle that decision, arguing itโs a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.โ
Title VII says that workplaces are unable to discriminate based on gender, including โpregnancy, childbirth and related conditions,โ according to the Daily News.
โFederal law is supposed to protect women from being punished, harassed or fired because of their sex, and being fired for unexpectedly getting your period at work is the very essence of sex discrimination,โ Galen Sherwin, senior staff attorney at the Womenโs Rights Project of the ACLU, told the Daily News. โThis kind of blatant discrimination against women in the workplace is why the ACLU Womenโs Rights Project was founded 45 years ago, and why the fight for gender equality must continue.โ
Read more at the New York Daily News and People magazine.
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