A Lesbian, formerly employed by Apple Computer as a human resources compensation consultant, has slapped one of the nation’s largest computer manufacturers with a discrimination lawsuit.
This lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, may be one of the largest discrimination lawsuits filed against Apple Computer by a Lesbian.
The amended complaint, filed on May 16, 2005, alleges that Shaune Patterson was suspended for one month and then subsequently wrongfully terminated from her position, after she complained that her white counterparts, who were junior to her, were making higher salaries than she was. Patterson alleges that the suspension came one day after she complained of racial discrimination.
Patterson, who has an MBA from the University of Texas, amended her complaint to include claims of sexual orientation and genetic characteristic discrimination. Prior to her one-month suspension, Patterson alleges that one of Apple’s managers wrote a memo describing her as a “rather obese-sized black lesbian.” According to Patterson’s attorney, Waukeen McCoy, “Apple discounted my client’s achievements, choosing to base the decision to discipline not on her performance, but rather on her size, race, and sexual orientation.” McCoy was the lead plaintiffs’ attorney in one of the largest U.S. History racial discrimination suit, Carroll v. Interstate Brands Corporation, which rendered a verdict for $133 million in August of 2000.
Source: PRNewswire.
Another thing, the memo was not given to the plaintiff while she was working for Apple, it was received in records obtained from the company after the lawsuit was filed; thus, the amended complaint.
Maybe those of you who are so negative about this case might need to gather all the facts before making ridiculous statements about someone who decided to take a stand, it is not easy to take a stand when you know you are right against a large corporate giant.
If the person wasn’t doing their job satisfactorily, fine, fire them – end of story. A person’s color, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or marital status shouldn’t even be a part of the equation – if they’re simply not performing, then a company should have the right to discipline the individual or terminate their employment.
However, when managers start throwing around statements like “black obese-sized lesbian” we have to start to wonder what relevance this description has in relation to the employees job performance. I suspect probably none whatsoever. Then why did the manager say it in the first place? Why did the manager feel that a person’s physical appearance, race, gender and sexual orientation were in any way relevant to the employees job performance?
For my money, it’s the manager who should been sacked in the first place ……….. but, we don’t have all the details yet.
1- It is not a violation to describe someone by their race. Have you ever seen a government form, medical demographic or any similar document WITHOUT it?
2- Being a Lesbian is her personal business, unless she chooses to MAKE it an issue. If she does, it’s ‘in play’ and she loses any sympathy from anybody but the most soft-headed. Militant homosexuality or heterosexuality has no place in the workplace. People are hired and paid to WORK– not pursue a political agenda. If she works in HR she should know that already.
3- Obese/Fat people ARE a growing (forgive the pun) problem in this country. The obese and their related health problems are going to break the financial back of our country if something does not happen fast. Since employers can discriminate against smokers, why not against those who will not lose weight? Although there are a few obese people who have a real medical condition, most just need to eat less & differently. They also need to get off of their *ss and MOVE. Losing weight is no great mystery– it just requires discipline and sustained effort.
4- Sounds like someone trolling for money to me. Few places in the universe are as P.C. as Apple. If she can’t cut it in Cupertino she should look forward to a lifetime of disappointment.
Just imagine what she will do with all the money
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MacDailyNews, you should be ashamed for changing your headline to include the quote that is part of this woman’s complaint.
And for those who will say there’s nothing wrong with it, because she IS an obese, black, lesbian woman–that is not the point. By putting it in the headline, MDN is only repeating the alleged comment that was offensive to the employee–a blatant bias in favor of Apple. MDN has lost its last shred of journalistic integrity.
Imagine this headline: “Bitch who deserved it” requests restraining order against abusive boyfriend
ADVICE!
Please take advice from seabasstin’s post. Inflammatory postings reach people like me who will be receiving my first mac tomorrow.
Your thoughts are your own to keep. However when you post things in public like what I have been reading it make me question the community. I can’t proundly represent a community of Child talk. Still trying to figure out what keeps me coming back to this site!
Perhaps I’m curious
BUT you would benifit your cause more if you were a bit more Humble
i agree with dennis. what’s up with the headline? fox news or the new york post would tabloid an article like this. is this what we should expect from mdn from now on?
I’m shocked about the homophobe and racist tunes that some of the above posts play.
I hope this does NOT reflect a big part of the Mac community.
Or maybe we just THINK NOT DIFFERENT after all… 🙁
purely circumstancial, it won’t hold in court.
It’s amazing how racist most of you guys are.You’re the people who still polute the world.
If I were me, I’d fire myself, just for reading this article. Then I’d sue myself, for unjust firing. After that I’d sue the goddam government for allowing a poor jobless person to be put through the pain and mental suffering and anguish of court proceedings. Plus, as I have a left big toe which is slightly larger than my right big toe, that makes me a minority group, so that’s gotta be worth a few extra mil.
Then I’d move to – nay buy and move to – a Pacific tropical island on which to retire, and employ lot’s of black obese lesbian women to run my own personal HR department.
Then I’d get sued by slim straight white women for discrimination, have to sell my island paradise to pay court imposed fees, and be back at square one.
I think I’ll apply for a job at Apple.
jboy,
It’s not the Mac community, it’s the United States in general. A big part of EVERY community is racist and most of us won’t ever know. Just recently I found out my best friend I’ve known since grade school is racist. I had no idea. Then again, when we’re just hanging out, there was no one for him to be racist against so I never COULD have known.
this is like your greatest PC-nightmare come true
reminds me of
german punk rock band “die toten hosen”
CD: Unsterblich
released 1999
song: lesbian black handicapped
http://www.dietotenhosen.de/en/veroeffentlichungen_songtexte.php?text=alben/unsterblich/lesbische.php
punchline
“lesbian black handicapped can be assholes, too.”
too darn funny
The right-wing racists are the ones that put Bush in office. They can’t be all bad… ummm… wait… yes, they are …and… uuuh… Bush really sucks (current approval rating is under 45%, even republicans think he sucks!)… and so does the Republican Congress totally suck. You’d think that with all of these good and pure religious types having their buddies in BOTH the White House and Congress, things would get done, the American society would thrive with such religious folk having all of the power. Right? Isn’t that what we were lead to believe?
But the US is quickly going down the crapper; economically (what happened with the $8 billion in oil the US got in the first few months in Iraq for “rebuilding the country” so Americans wouldn’t have to foot the bill… WHICH WE ARE!?), militarily (base closings), morally (altering the Constitution to outlaw love between two people based on their own bigoted and warped misinterpretation of the Bible) and socially screwed (not secure any longer with the Republicans raping the Social Security system for their own gain). The US is going to Hell in a basket and the “morally-pure religious” Republicans are holding the handle.
Democrats always said that Republicans are greedy, self-centered, pricks. How much more proof do you need?
The Republicans were right with ONE thing; they said that if they were to ever run BOTH the White House and the Congress, things would change. They were 100% correct!! Now, the nation will pray for a Democratic run government in 3 years to fix all of these problems. Why don’t people learn? It seems like Republican memories fade every 4 years once the nation is back on track and stable so they can rape it again.
When the greedy fight amongst themselves, no one wins!!
Bigots, I’d burn them all if my idea of Christianity were anything like theirs.
I call bullshit! She just wants money for the liposuction.
Ah, so many people who know so much about the circumstances behind the alleged events.
Come come my plebian posters, allow the courts to adjudicate the matter. That’s what they’re paid for.
fat, lazy, greedy, black lesbian
To half of you people: please stop being stupid, it’s very annoying.
For the others here’s something to think about.
> NoPCZone:
>It is not a violation to describe someone by their race. Have you ever seen a government form, medical demographic or any similar document WITHOUT it?
Actually yes, all of them, but I don’t live in the USA
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Here, any data processing of personal characteristics beyond those found on an ID card is simply illegal. That leaves name, date/city of birth, gender and social security number. Plus maybe height, what older documents called “distinctive traits” (amputed legs, glasses and such) and perhaps eyes colour since it’s mentionned on passports as it isn’t obvious from ID snapshots.
This has very real consequences on the way individuals relate to each other (they simply do, as opposed to relating to each other’s “community”).
Other consequences such as total lack of any “race” (or religion or whatever)-related criminality statistics puzzle US “specialists” to no end, which doesn’t stop them from drawing paranoid assumptions instead of realizing the extremely obvious facts that:
-a- There is NO scientific basis for “racial” categories, so any use of that “information” is a fallacy bound to cause flawed reasoning and flawed societies. Reality is already complex enough to avoid basing a society on non-existant distinctions, or on your preferred toothbrush, sexual fantasies, or imaginary friend for those whose governments still consider BELIEFS as relevant to public matters as facts (not to mention those who boldly claim “faith-based” politics, scaring the hell out of anyone who thought the West exited obscurantism about 1k years ago).
-b- One doesn’t steal an apple because of skin colour or religious belief: it has to do exclusively with poverty and social injustice (or less often with mental disorders). So it is pointless to calculate ratios of black killer teens or white corrupt CEOs: nothing will ever come out of it that wouldn’t prove stupid the day another colour of teenager becomes dominantly poor or another colour of CEO takes precedence, which WILL inevitably occur as long as colour will have any other meaning than colour. Such simple notions won’t become mainstream in the US as long as discussing politics will be “inappropriate” (which is unique among democracies), making it more comfortable to blame nature for deviant behavior (and thus to just cage deviants).
-c- Stupid thinking leads to stupid decisions and poor relationships with reasonable people (if I were to govern a country with one of the top higher [detainees|executions]/population ratios in the world, I’d feel pretty stupid trying to convince anyone of letting me kill foreigners to free them “too”).
Yes, I know, point (a) above shocks ignorant morons: blacks are no more a distinct race than redheads in biological terms, all attemps to show otherwise were politically motivated and mostly vanished after the decolonization of Asia and Africa. But decolonization never occured in America, so maybe you need stupidity. Too bad it makes you so dangerous and damaging to the rest of us as stupidity spreads faster than knowledge.
Tempting is the stupid side, easier it is.
— Master Yogurt
HAHAHAHAHA,
dude, this is soooooo funny.
hahhaahahahahahah
Oh wait, I can refine a bit:
Tempting is the dork side, easier it is.
Now beat that one.
Matt: Is that song on the German ITMS? That could be a telling sign!
lol.
has it ever occurred to anyone how unnecessary it is to mention that Patterson is a “rather obese-sized black lesbian” in a company memo? why couldn’t the manager just refer to her by name instead of attaching race, sexual orientation, and physical descriptors?
“… something to think about”
Not really, VRic – your silly points are the worse examples of pseudo-scientific tripe on this page (and that’s saying something!). I can’t decide what silly statement in your rant are the most amusing, but here are my favorites:
“…Reality is already complex enough” – reality is only a complex subject to confused nihilists, doggedly re-reading “Fathers And Sons” and trying to find something worthwhile to talk about.
“…who thought the West exited obscurantism about 1k years ago” – bafflingly vapid statement, but great use of the word “obscurantism”.
“…One doesn’t steal an apple because of skin colour or religious belief: it has to do exclusively with poverty and social injustice (or less often with mental disorders)” – so only victims of society are thieves? Does anyone place any responsibility on the individual, or is everyone now a victim? How about murderers? Rapists? Animal Bestialists? Are they just poor victims, too?
“…(if I were to govern a country with one of the top higher [detainees|executions]/population ratios in the world, I’d feel pretty stupid trying to convince anyone of letting me kill foreigners to free them “too”)” – ??? – Is this just a broadside at Bush, or was there some adolescent point here?
“…But decolonization never occured in America, so maybe you need stupidity” – Actually, we conducted a forced decolonization called the American Revolution, so I’m not sure what you mean there, but I assume it’s just another mindless rant against america.
Whether she is obese, black and a lesbian, and these are facts. As many people have pointed out, she should just get on with her work, and it should have nothing to do with it – I agree.
As a result I also agree that as this manager was obviuosly writing a memo regarding work (he should be), then like she shouldn’t make a deal about being obese, black and lesbian – HE SHOULDN’T EITHER!
If he was comminucation about anything related to work, and her performance, these FACTS about her are irrelivant. That’s the point.
You know she may be just a lazy arsed bi%@h. But now because this BONE head of a manager brought her colour, weight and sexual preference into a company/work related document, he’s given her a case.
Also IF she had made a complaint about wages being possibly biased, and THEN she was suspended, with little other reasoning, again this BONE head of a manager needs to be fired.
Being in HR she could have LEGALLY have access to wages information. She did state that these other employees were in more junior positions, so it seems fair to ask why. If I found out that my collegues in less senior positions were being paid more than me, I’d complain too. If it happended that the ONLY common trait to differentiate their wage conditions to mine was that they were of a different race/religion etc, I’d also be likely to suggest that that may be the reason.
Of course when making the complaint/enquiry as to why this may be, I’d expect my employer to respond. If they can show me that my performance is sub-standard, or that I have less responsibility (unlikely if I’m in the senior position), then I may accept that, or take my skills/knowledge elswehere.
I’d certainly be pissed off too, if I had an e-mail sent around the office describing me as a average-sized, white, heterosexual, and was then suspended without reason. The fact is I am an average-sized, white, heterosexual, but that is irrelivant to how, why, or how well I do my job. The suspension also would seem like retaliation for asking a resonable question (well reasonable if there is a REASONable answer).
My 2 cents.
Luke
Wow, the racist bigots have really come out of the woodwork today. I had to check that I was, in fact, reading MDN and not some teenage gaming website. Viridian and other voices of reason – thanks for standing firm against willful ignorance. I was going to post a reasoned plea for tolerance and suspending judgement, but I just couldn’t get past the urge to feed a page full of obscenities to the pinheads. Glad someone around here has a level head.
Ah hell, I can’t resist:
All you gay-hating, fat-hating, woman-hating, anything-different-hating morons, I hope your Macs morph overnight into virus-infested 10-year-old Compaqs running Windows 3.1. Oh, and don’t forget to go sit on a sharpened broomstick.