Sacked for Supporting Trump, Nurse Claims in Lawsuit

An Indian American nurse has filed a suit against the Denver Health Medical Center claiming that she was fired from her job for supporting United States President Donald Trump in the presidential campaign in 2016.

Lizzy Mathews, 65, from Lakewood worked at the Denver Health Medical Center. In her lawsuit filed on Jan. 11 in the US District Court in Denver, she has sued nursing manager Kelly Torres and Marc Fedo, the director of acute nursing, the Denver Post reported.

Mathews seeks to be given her job back along with back pay as well as punitive damages for the emotional stress that she says she endured after being sacked from her job.

She alleges in her lawsuit that the reason her services were terminated was due to an incident that occurred on Sept. 10, 2016. As Mathews was tending to a patient who was a former senior employee at the hospital, she was asked by the patient who she thought would win the elections. Mathew replied saying that she hoped that Donald Trump, who was then one of the presidential candidates, wins the elections and that she was praying for him. The patient after hearing this said, “Oh no, I don’t want him.”

“The Defendants’ act of terminating Mrs. Mathews from her employment without eligibility for rehire was motivated by Mrs. Mathews’ exercise of constitutionally protected conduct of association with her political views,” the lawsuit said, reported Fox News.

The lawsuit added that three days later, Torres told Mathews in a phone call that she had received a complaint from a patient about her conversation regarding the election. Torres also asked whether she had asked the patient to read the Bible, to which Mathews said that she did not, reported Fox News.

Mathews had served at the hospital for 27 years. She had earned her nursing degree from the Hamidia Medical College Hospital in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. She later studied psychiatric nursing at Front Range Community College in Colorado.

She says she was sacked by what Torres communicated to her on the phone. She was told that she didn’t put in enough hours at work. The termination was approved by Fedo, stating that she was not eligible to be hired back.

According to the lawsuit, the sole document that addresses her termination from employment says that she was sacked for “other reasons.” Mathews saw this only on Jan. 24, 2017 and she complained to the Equal Employment Occupation Commission on March 1, 2017.

Mathews’ lawsuit says that when she commented about the result of the election in 2016, she engaged in the constitutionally protected activity of free speech. The lawsuit also alleges that Mathews was discriminated on the grounds of being an Asian and an Indian.

“Mathews’ supervisors treated non-Asian/Indian employees more favorably, including but not limited to disparate discipline and with less scrutiny then that applied to Ms. Mathews that led to termination of her employment without eligibility for rehire based on race and national origin,” the lawsuit stated, according to reports.