A former Penn employee filed a lawsuit against the University on Wednesday, alleging discrimination and retaliation based on her race and disability.<\/p>\n
The May 13 suit \u2014 brought on by Marille Heallis, a former assistant director of finance and administration \u2014 sued Penn<\/a> under Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, and the Philadelphia Fair Practices Ordinance. In the complaint, Heallis\u2019 lawyers argued that she was subject to discriminatory treatment under Associate Vice Provost for Research, Environmental Health, and Radiation Safety Maureen O\u2019Leary.<\/p>\n According to the lawsuit, the various \u201cmanagers, supervisors, agents, and employees\u201d hired by Penn \u201cengaged in the pattern and practice\u201d of discrimination toward Heallis.\u00a0<\/p>\n A University spokesperson declined The Daily Pennsylvanian\u2019s request for comment, citing the ongoing litigation. Requests were left with O\u2019Leary and Heallis\u2019 lawyers.<\/p>\n Heallis argued that \u201cAfrican American female employees had a very high turnover rate\u201d under O\u2019Leary, either transferring out of the department or quitting entirely.<\/p>\n Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Sign Up<\/a><\/p>\n She was the only Black person in the office with a leadership role and the only one with the assistant director title, according to the lawsuit. Four other employees with \u201cequivalent director roles\u201d were titled associate directors.\u00a0<\/p>\n Heallis was also the only director assigned to work in a cubicle in the basement, while \u201c[a]ll of the other Caucasian directors had offices of their own.”<\/p>\n Due to her lack of a personal office, Heallis was \u201cforced\u201d to find private spaces to conduct meetings, the lawsuit alleged. Following a complaint to Human Resources, she was eventually provided an office over three months after she started work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Heallis also claimed that she struggled to secure permission to work from home despite having severe asthma, a process the filing states \u201cno other directors had to go through.\u201d Her cubicle \u201chad no air ventilation or windows.\u201d<\/p>\n Between November 2023 and January 2024, the filing states that Heallis had to take three medical leaves of absence due to her asthma, which is classified as \u201ca serious health condition that is considered to be a disability\u201d under the ADA.<\/p>\n According to the lawsuit, Heallis \u201crequested the reasonable medical accommodation to work from home once per week\u201d as an option in the event that she \u201csuffered from severe breathing issues and could not come into work at any point during the week.\u201d<\/p>\n Heallis alleged that she did not originally want to make a complaint because O\u2019Leary had made \u201cderogatory comments\u201d about another employee who had requested accommodations.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Heallis\u2019 request was approved, the filing states that \u201cO\u2019Leary only wanted to approve it for a two (2) month period,\u201d despite the fact that Heallis\u2019 asthma \u201cwas an ongoing disability that would not get better over time.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Leary eventually terminated Heallis\u2019 position, citing redundancy.<\/p>\n In the suit, Heallis requested damages to cover her fees and losses associated with the discriminatory conduct, as well as punitive and emotional pain, and suffering damages.\u00a0<\/p>\n She also asked for an injunction of any further discriminatory conduct by the University and its affiliates and for the implementation of \u201ctraining programs, policies, practices and programs which provide equal employment opportunities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Heallis requested that any \u201cnegative, discriminatory, and\/or defamatory memoranda and documentation\u201d be removed from her employment record, including any pretexts for her termination.\u00a0<\/p>\n Staff reporter Lavanya Mani covers legal affairs and can be reached at mani@thedp.com<\/a>. At Penn, she studies English. Follow her on X @lavanyamani_<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Penn employee filed a lawsuit against the University on Wednesday, alleging discrimination and retaliation based on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":798738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-798737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116579944893565764","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}