NY Post Cartoon Leads to Harassment Lawsuit
A former editor for the New York Post, Sandra Guzman, has filed a harassment and workplace discrimination lawsuit against the paper for what she feels is an unfair termination over her feelings about a NY Post cartoon. New York Magazine reports that the NY Post cartoon was considered to be racist by many news outlets.
Guzman's complaint has been posted by the Huffington Post. While the lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages, it did detail how Ms. Guzman felt that her voiced outrage over a political cartoon that depicted President Barack Obama as a rabid chimp shot by police was the reason that she was fired. The lawsuit also detailed some pretty shocking allegations of a racist and sexually charged workplace.
Some of these harassment allegations are that the editor of the paper showed her and other female colleagues a picture of a naked man as a joke, that he allegedly he rubbed his penis on a female colleague, that Sandra Guzman had to endure racist remarks about her Latina heritage, and that the last five employees fired by the paper were all minorities.
The paper's response to these allegations according to Huffington Post has been that the lawsuit "has no merit and is based on charges that are groundless."
But there are instances that Guzman has detailed in her complaint that are compelling. After she had publicly complained about the chimp cartoon, NY Post made her job hard to do. For example, the newspaper allegedly denied her the privilege of covering the private White House reception with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor even though she was the sole reporter at the event and she is friends with the justice.
She was allegedly fired even after positive performance reviews. The paper claimed that she was let go because she edited an insert of the newspaper called Tempo which the paper decided to stop running. However, Ms. Guzman claims that she also edited for an additional 24 sections besides Tempo, and was fired in retaliation against her complaints.
Let's see what happens. It seems like Ms. Guzman may have a lot of claims against the paper. If she can back it up, it will make the newspaper's gossip column look like child's play.
Related Resources:
- Do the antidiscrimination laws protect only women and minorities? (Findlaw)
- What should I do if I think I have been discriminated against in violation of the law? (Findlaw)
- Discrimination & Harassment (Findlaw)
- Employment Law Overview (provided by Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P.A.)
- Employment Law News (provided by Holman Schiavone, LLC)