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  zaterdag 27 mei 2023 @ 22:05:48 #1
37149 slashdotter3
Arrow to the knee!
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https://www.nytimes.com/2(...)-discrimination.html

She Said Equinox Fired Her for Being a Black Woman. A Jury Agreed.
The high-end gym franchise was ordered to pay Röbynn Europe, a former employee, damages of $11.25 million.


Röbynn Europe closes her eyes, looking restful and contemplative.

“Racism and sexism — they are just pervasive in the fitness industry,’’ said Röbynn Europe, a former Equinox employee who was recently awarded $11.25 million in a discrimination lawsuit.Credit...Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times

Between 2018 and 2019, Röbynn Europe, a former professional body builder, worked at an Equinox on the Upper East Side, where she managed personal trainers. Years earlier, as a scholarship student at Brearley, the girls’ school several blocks away, where she began in seventh grade, commuting first from Canarsie and then Coney Island, she had experienced the coded bias of privileged teenagers. There was only one other Black student in her class. But still that had not prepared her for what she described as crass, unfiltered expressions of prejudice from male colleagues in an expensive gym, awash with the scent of eucalyptus oil if not the base notes of enlightenment.

Ms. Europe’s tenure at the club was short-lived; Equinox terminated her employment in less than a year because, the company said, she was late 47 times in the course of 10 months. Ms. Europe held a different view of her firing, believing that her lateness was merely a pretext for discrimination, and soon after she filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, arguing that she had been subjected to a hostile work environment and eventually let go because of her race and gender. Last week, a predominantly white jury of five women and three men agreed, delivering a verdict in little over an hour. The next day they awarded her $11.25 million in damages.

The swiftness of the jury’s decision and the size of the payout — $10 million in punitive damages and $1.25 million for the distress she suffered — follow a pattern similar to the verdict reached in the same courthouse just a few weeks before, in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against Donald J. Trump. In both instances, the process and outcome suggest the ways in which recent transformative social movements around race and gender might reframe the way that juries think about the long shadow of emotional disruption that bigotry or sexual violence can produce.

Ms. Europe, who had been an art student at Oberlin College, was an unlikely entry into the fitness world. Returning to New York after graduation, she took an office job at the David Barton Gym, where she worked to support herself through a tattooing apprenticeship. In 2006, she received her certification as a personal trainer. “Racism and sexism — they are just pervasive in the fitness industry,” she said when I met her at her lawyer’s office in Brooklyn recently.

“In coastal cities, training is something you can do without a degree and you can make $75 an hour — there are not a lot of opportunities to do that, so it’s a big draw for people of color.” But the management structure, she observed, is often white and male.

In response to the verdict, Equinox did not engage in the current fashion for self-reproach and vows to do better. Instead, it issued a statement saying that it “vehemently disagreed” with the finding and did not “tolerate discrimination in any form.” In the motion it filed asking the court to reconsider the case, either by way of a new trial or a reduction in the award, lawyers maintained that the jurors, “guided by sympathy and emotion,” had “erroneously” bought into the plaintiff’s claim that she had been the victim of racial animus and “issued extreme, unconscionable damages” as a result.

The case revolved in large part around allegations that a manager who reported to Ms. Europe, a middle-aged white man whom she described as insulated by his relationships with people above her, refused to accept her as his supervisor. She claimed that he repeatedly delivered his vulgar takes on Black female bodies, referred to nonwhite employees as “lazy” and expressed the hope that he could get them fired; he called one Black co-worker “autistic.”

In the early spring of 2019, the suit claimed, he “demanded” that his boss wait outside the gym with him for a young Black woman to leave a cafe where she worked so he could make a pass at her, on the theory that he would be better positioned with a Black person standing next to him. Ms. Europe, according to the complaint, “refused to be a racial pawn.”

The accumulation of these incidents, she testified, made her time at Equinox so stressful that the bulimia she struggled with for much of her life worsened. While working there, Ms. Europe told me, her condition was bad enough that she began vomiting several times a day and started to throw up blood; she eventually had to enter a treatment program for eating disorders. Her lawyers, all of them women at Crumiller, which describes itself as “a feminist litigation firm,” argued that their client’s complaints to male bosses went unheard.

On the witness stand, Ms. Europe talked about an incident that had left her feeling especially defeated. One evening in June 2019, she was in her office when she got a call from someone who dealt directly with members, a woman who was talking to a client who had specifically asked for a white trainer. Ms. Europe explained that a request like that exposed the company to liability and would need to be handled by a supervisor, whom she assumed would tell the client that what he was asking for was inappropriate.

She recounted how upset she had been over her co-worker’s willingness to relay the “request as though it would just be good customer service to fulfill it.” When she told her boss, he went ahead and let the client have a white trainer anyway.

Although he was reprimanded by a superior in writing a week later, and according to a spokesman at Equinox, fired one year after that, Ms. Europe happened to receive a second disciplinary warning for lateness on the same day that she had written an email bringing the issue to the attention of managers and people in human resources. Three months later, she was fired.

Ms. Europe never denied that she was often late for work, but her lawyers had presented jurors with a chart indicating how many other people also failed to show up on time, though, with relatively few consequences.

In their motion to have the case re-evaluated, lawyers for Equinox did not dispute that the racially and sexually charged comments made by her subordinate had occurred but argued that they were too few to support claims of a hostile workplace. Beyond that, they maintained that the emotional distress Ms. Europe suffered as a function of her time at the gym was not “egregious” enough — a legal term — to warrant the amount of money the jury recommended.


Röbynn Europe with members of her all-female legal team at Crumiller.

The matter of what pain is worth, in monetary terms, remains an endlessly fraught and divisive question. Judges can — and often do — overrule decisions juries make in these types of civil cases. Some legislators in New York State, for example, believe that the privilege ought to be curbed, arguing that these reversals can seem arbitrary. But the conclusions of jurors can also seem inscrutable.

And yet sometimes a remarkable harmony emerges. In November, a federal jury in Texas awarded $366 million to a Black saleswoman who had sued FedEx over discrimination in a case that was thought to deliver the largest ever verdict in litigation involving employment and racial bias. Three months later, a federal judge rejected the company’s bid to throw out the award or reduce it.
pi_209308537
Oké en nu?
  zaterdag 27 mei 2023 @ 22:40:02 #3
396386 sturmpie
for night & nature
pi_209308641
47x in 10 maanden tijd te laat op je werk komen en $11.25 miljoen toe krijgen
vrede, voedsel, vrijheid, veiligheid, vooruitgang
  zaterdag 27 mei 2023 @ 22:46:05 #4
73232 De_Hertog
Aut bibat, aut abeat
pi_209308720
Die tweet bovenaan laat wel weer zien waarom je nieuws niet via willekeurige Twitter accounts moet lezen.. In het artikel staat dat te laat komen blijkbaar 'normaal' was daar.
Mary had a little lamb
Then Mary had dessert
pi_209309082
@equi.noxe is een zeer knappe vrouw
Cindy De Vuyst
pi_209309826
Pff altijd die kuttopics met een gekopieerd niet-vertaald artikel en verder niets :')
pi_209309854
quote:
13s.gif Op zaterdag 27 mei 2023 22:46 schreef De_Hertog het volgende:
Die tweet bovenaan laat wel weer zien waarom je nieuws niet via willekeurige Twitter accounts moet lezen.. In het artikel staat dat te laat komen blijkbaar 'normaal' was daar.
Klopt want op tijd komen is witte superatisme.
Ô mon citoyens vous serez unis.
  VIVA zondag 28 mei 2023 @ 01:00:43 #8
47344 cosmosis
Lucky to be alive
pi_209309876
Laat me raden, ze zou ook ontslagen zijn als een blanke blauwoogige arier met die houding, maarja dat bekt niet echt lekker.....
What lies behind makes no sense in my mind
  zondag 28 mei 2023 @ 01:10:25 #9
213215 Interloper
Verdomd gezellig hiero
pi_209309926
Want natuurlijk ligt het niet aan mevrouwtje zelf, nee hoor, gewoon weer lekker alles afwentelen op die elusieve fantoom genaamd "y-soopremussee" :')

Domme, inhalige trol.

[ Bericht 66% gewijzigd door Interloper op 28-05-2023 01:15:52 ]
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
pi_209310253
quote:
7s.gif Op zondag 28 mei 2023 00:56 schreef HSG het volgende:

[..]
Klopt want op tijd komen is witte superatisme.
Blijkbaar niet dus. Anders hadden haar collega's het wel gedaan.
"Pools are perfect for holding water"
pi_209310256
quote:
0s.gif Op zondag 28 mei 2023 01:10 schreef Interloper het volgende:
Want natuurlijk ligt het niet aan mevrouwtje zelf, nee hoor, gewoon weer lekker alles afwentelen op die elusieve fantoom genaamd "y-soopremussee" :')

Domme, inhalige trol.
Als het bij jou op het werk een cultuur is dat iedereen constant te laat komt, maar jij wordt daar alleen op afgestraft, dan zou jij dat een eerlijke behandeling vinden?
"Pools are perfect for holding water"
pi_209310258
quote:
81s.gif Op zondag 28 mei 2023 01:00 schreef cosmosis het volgende:
Laat me raden, ze zou ook ontslagen zijn als een blanke blauwoogige arier met die houding, maarja dat bekt niet echt lekker.....
quote:
7s.gif Op zondag 28 mei 2023 00:56 schreef HSG het volgende:

[..]
Klopt want op tijd komen is witte superatisme.
quote:
0s.gif Op zondag 28 mei 2023 01:10 schreef Interloper het volgende:
Want natuurlijk ligt het niet aan mevrouwtje zelf, nee hoor, gewoon weer lekker alles afwentelen op die elusieve fantoom genaamd "y-soopremussee" :')

Domme, inhalige trol.
Hebben jullie nou echt zoveel moeite met het daadwerkelijk lezen van het artikel?
"Pools are perfect for holding water"
pi_209310329
Artikel gelezen en op basis daarvan lijkt het ontslag me onterecht. De vergoeding is bizar hoog maarja das wel vaker zo in de VS.
Poetinsupporters staan aan de verkeerde kant van de geschiedenis
pi_209315587
quote:
0s.gif Op zondag 28 mei 2023 03:57 schreef probeer het volgende:

[..]
[..]
[..]
Hebben jullie nou echt zoveel moeite met het daadwerkelijk lezen van het artikel?
Het is in het Engels en daar heb ik geen zin aan.
Ô mon citoyens vous serez unis.
pi_209315892
quote:
0s.gif Op zondag 28 mei 2023 03:57 schreef probeer het volgende:

[..]
[..]
[..]
Hebben jullie nou echt zoveel moeite met het daadwerkelijk lezen van het artikel?
waarom zou je in vredesnaam dat artikel lezen?
Reason is not automatic, those who deny it cannot be conquered by it, Ayn Rand
Discuseren met domme mensen verlies ik omdat ik niet genoeg ervaring heb met dom lullen.
pi_209315903
quote:
1s.gif Op zondag 28 mei 2023 00:52 schreef Raw85 het volgende:
Pff altijd die kuttopics met een gekopieerd niet-vertaald artikel en verder niets :')
dit...

het zou verboden moeten worden :Y
Reason is not automatic, those who deny it cannot be conquered by it, Ayn Rand
Discuseren met domme mensen verlies ik omdat ik niet genoeg ervaring heb met dom lullen.
pi_209316008
Al zou ze voor aap zijn uitgemaakt, dan nog is de schadevergoeding absurd.

Domme Amerikanen. Hoe zijn zij ooit zo machtig geworden zeg.
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