ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge says a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former firefighter who was one of the highest ranking females in a North Carolina fire department can proceed based on a claim of “disparate treatment.”
The Asheville Citizen Times reports attorneys for the city of Asheville and Fire Chief Scott Burnette had asked U.S. District Court Judge Martin Reidinger for a pre-trial summary judgment throwing out all claims by ex-firefighter Joy Ponder.
Reidinger dismissed claims against Burnette, but ruled that the city, as the chief’s employer, could be held liable for his actions, which may have amounted to disparate treatment of Ponder based on her gender.
Ponder, says she was repeatedly discriminated against because of her sex and fought to keep her job while battling breast cancer. The first female chief of a municipal fire department in the state says she briefly pondered suicide after years of sexual harassment.
Ponder and Susanna Schmitt Williams are among numerous female fighters in the United States who have filed lawsuits against their employers alleging they were subjected to demeaning behavior that helped end their careers.
Williams, who was fired in July 2019, told The Associated Press that she was “the subject of sexualized rumors (and) hostility in the form of insubordination by those who reported to me.”
Williams said Carrboro Town Manager David Andrews overturned both her disciplinary and operational decisions, and for the latter, relied instead on the recommendations of men in the department who were lower ranked and had less experience and education. Andrews didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Ponder, who resigned from her post as Asheville Fire Department division chief in September, said she faced years of harassment and gender discrimination from Chief Scott Burnette after she led outside research on the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among city firefighters.
Burnette did not return a phone call seeking comment. Peggy Rowe, an assistant to City Manager Debra Campbell, said the city doesn’t comment on ongoing lawsuits.
Ponder filed her lawsuit in November and then an amended complaint last month. Williams filed her lawsuit in January. Both are still pending.
Williams' lawsuit contends that a Charlotte, North Carolina-based law firm hired by the town of Carrboro to conduct a questionnaire of employees found up to 12 instances of harassment and discrimination against her that led to a hostile work environment. The law firm also found fault with Andrews, the town manager, for allowing fire department employees to go around Williams and take their complaints about the department to him, according to the suit.
Williams said she filed two complaints of sexual discrimination against members of the fire department during her tenure as chief but neither was taken seriously. She says she became so distressed by the situation that one day after work she walked into her garage and considered taking her own life.
“I thought ‘Oh, my God, I could crank up the car and just silently go and just be done with it all’ because I was that stressed and that depressed over everything that had happened,” Williams said.
Instead, she thought of her sons and decided to see her fight through to the end. She received clearance from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to proceed with a lawsuit against Carrboro.
Williams said she is the third female department head in Carrboro to file such a suit against Andrews, who recently announced that he would retire in July.
Ponder, who became division chief in 2014, took a leave of absence in early 2019 to battle breast cancer. She said that when she returned at the end of the year, Burnette and the deputy chief “designed and executed an effective demotion and campaign to display me as a poor performer and divisive employee.”
She was placed under her bosses' close supervision — “effectively surveillance,” she said — told to stay away from the firefighters under her command and moved to an isolated corner office from which she said she “was afraid to even walk to the restroom or copier.”
“The continued harassment and abrupt disruption of my schedule and life that I had maintained successfully for many years led to a deterioration in my physical and mental health and I was forced to leave,” Ponder told the AP.
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