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A devoutly religious Florida woman has been awarded $21.5 million in damages after a federal jury ruled against Hilton hotels for continuously scheduling her to work on Sundays.
According to NBC Miami, missionary Jean Marie Pierre, worked as a dishwasher at the Hilton’s Miami Conrad property for almost a decade, and for the majority of that time her religious needs were accommodated. However, after the 60-year old Pierre missed six scheduled Sundays of work in order to attend religious services at the Bethel Baptist Church in northeastern Miami-Dade County, she says management decided to fire her.
“They accommodated her for seven years, and they easily could’ve accommodated her, but instead of doing that, they set her up for absenteeism and threw her out,” explained Pierre’s lawyer, Marc Brumer. “She’s a soldier of Christ. She was doing this for all the other people, all the other workers who are being discriminated against.”
Pierre says she informed her superiors at the Hilton’s Miami Conrad that Sundays were off limits for her due to her religious beliefs back in 2006 when she first took the job, so they knew what they were dealing with from the beginning.
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When the hotel tried to start scheduling her to work Sundays in 2009, she told the company she would have to leave because she was not budging on her stance. In response, the hotel backed off and continued to respect her holy day until 2015.
“I love God,” said the Haiti-born, mother of six. “No, I can’t do Sundays, because Sunday I honor God.”
When the Conrad again started scheduling her to work on Sundays in late 2015, Pierre once again reminded them of her scheduling limitations. However, this time the company was decidedly less understanding and after a few months, she was fired for alleged misconduct, negligence and “unexcused absences,” according to the lawsuit.
During the trial, lawyers representing the Virginia-based Park Hotels & Resorts (formally the Hilton Worldwide) argued the company had no knowledge that the longtime employee is a member of a Catholic missionary group that helps the poor, and therefore, were in the dark about why she refused to work Sundays.
The award was filed on Tuesday with the U.S. District Court in Miami. The jury also found she was due $35,000 in back wages and $500,000 for emotional pain and mental anguish and that the Hilton was in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
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However, according to Brumer, not only were there letters in her personnel file explaining her circumstances, but er pastor even went down to her job to corroborate her reasons for having to miss work on Sundays to her employers.
Federal law requires that employers make reasonable accommodations for religious practices. Following the jury’s decision, the Hilton corporate team provided the following statement in response to the award:
“We were very disappointed by the jury’s verdict & don’t believe that it is supported by the facts of this case or the law. During Ms. Pierre’s ten years with the hotel, multiple concessions were made to accommodate her personal and religious commitments.”
Because punitive damages, are meant to teach defendants a lesson rather than being based on actual harm suffered, they are usually capped at $300,000 in federal court where Pierre’s case went to trial.
“The jury was not aware of the cap,” conceded Brumer. “They thought that they punished Hilton hotel with $21 million [in damages].”
Pierre will likely end up with something closer to $500,000.
The hotel plans to appeal.
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