Saijal ‘Sara’ Shah worked in Michigan, at The Lodge at Maple Creek.
By Raif Karerat
An Indian American nurse has filed a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against her former employer after she was fired for taking a break due to nausea.
Saijal “Sara” Shah, who worked at The Lodge at Maple Creek, a skilled nursing home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, claims she was punished for taking breaks to recover from nausea during a exhausting shifts, and is consequently suing Maple Creek and Lutheran Social Services of Michigan, which manages the facility.
Attorney Stephen Muhich, representing Lutheran Social Services and Maple Creek, has called for the federal lawsuit to be dismissed, according to the MLive Media Group.
He also adamantly denied all allegations that Shah was treated unfairly based on her pregnancy or her race.
Shah said she was disciplined after she left work to recover from nausea during a double shift even though the former director of nursing told her she “acted reasonably,” her attorney, Sarah Riley Howard, said in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids.
On March 15, after working an eight-hour shift with another impending, Shah vomited and could not work, her attorney said. She told another nurse she had to go home, take medication, and try to return to work.
She was absent from work from 5:49 p.m. to 7:02 p.m. She said she left a number for her supervisor to call but was disciplined for failing to leave a way to contact her and failing to clock out, the lawsuit said.
Shah was fired after she took a break on April 3 in the family break room while working the overnight shift. She claimed she had a slight fever and needed a 15-minute break, and sat in the family break room so that she could hear if others needed her. A social worker showed up at 4:13 a.m. and accused her of sleeping, which she denied.
The lawsuit also alleges Shah was singled out because she is of Indian descent. White workers “were not singled out or penalized, falsely accused of sleeping on the job or targeted as Plaintiff was,” claims the official filing.