Her boss lived at the hotel, making the alleged daily harassment hard to escape
A pregnant hotel worker in Oklahoma was allegedly harassed, demoted to harder duties, and fired - all in the space of about two months after her employer learned she was expecting.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a federal lawsuit on September 28 against three related hotel companies operating under the Continental Inn name in Blackwell, Oklahoma, alleging they violated Title VII's pregnancy discrimination protections across four counts.
According to the complaint, the worker started at the hotel in October 2023 as housekeeping and laundry staff and was promoted to front desk within a week. She typically worked Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
That changed in March 2024, the filing says, when she told a manager she was pregnant with a baby due at the end of September.
The complaint alleges the company's operations manager - who oversaw all of the chain's hotels across Oklahoma and Texas and reported directly to the owner - learned of the pregnancy during a management meeting in or around April 2024. According to the filing, the operations manager asked why the worker was working there while pregnant. The owner, the complaint says, commented that it was a liability for her to work while pregnant.
The operations manager also told the worker she would need to quit in July 2024, roughly two months before her due date, according to the filing. When management relayed this...
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