Black Nurses and Nurse Assistants Were Subjected to Constant, Unremedied Racial Abuse by Patients, Federal Agency Charges
BURLINGTON, Vt. – 98 Starr Road Operating Co., LLC, doing business as Elderwood at Burlington, a large long-term care facility located in Burlington, Vermont, violated federal law by allowing black nurses and nurse assistants to be subjected to ongoing and egregious racial harassment, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today.
According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, starting in 2020, certain White patients/residents of Elderwood repeatedly directed offensive racial slurs at Elderwood’s Black nurses and nurse assistants, including “n----r”, “coon”, “monkey” and “Black b-----s.” One patient repeatedly told Black employees to “go back to Africa”; followed Black employees throughout the facility so as to racially berate them; and physically assaulted Black employees because of their race.
The EEOC charged that despite Elderwood’s managers and supervisors witnessing some of these incidents and despite numerous complaints about the race harassment lodged to management by the Black nurses and nurse assistants, Elderwood told the Black employees that its residents could say what they wanted at the facility. In response to one complaint by a Black nurse, an Elderwood manager told her that she should be used to being the target of racial slurs because she “is from the South.”
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