[BehindTheBlack] Back in August 2021, I reported the horrible blacklisting of Tara Gustilo, a biracial physician from the Philippines, who had been demoted and experienced a $150K cut in salary at the Hennepin Healthcare system in Minnesota simply because she had posted criticisms of the racist Black Lives Matter movement as well as the critical race theory policies, now known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), that Hennepin was pushing.
In addition to filing a discrimination complaint with the federal government, Gustilo sued, represented by the Minnesota-based Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC). You can read her lawsuit here [pdf].
That lawsuit however had been dismissed by a lower court. Last week however the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out that decision, reinstating the lawsuit.
The court’s decision can be read here. The court specifically noted that Gustilo’s right to free speech appeared to have been violated, and that fact must be considered by a jury.
The facts of the case seem to me pretty clear. Before she expressed her opinions about BLM and critical race theory, Gustilo had routinely gotten positive job reviews. Moreover, because she was biracial, she had been celebrated as an example of Hennepin’s dedication to promoting diversity. Once she spoke out, however, the company immediately moved to take away her position as chair of one department while cutting her pay, explicitly telling her that it did so because of her opinions. That action was further prompted by a wave of anger and madness among some fellow employees, whom during this time of panic had somehow lost the ability to tolerate other opinions.
What made the action even more personally galling was that the person chosen to replace her at the department asked her for advice on how to run the department, specifically because of her “continued high performance and patient satisfaction.”
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