Northern Virginia Surgery Center Pays $50,000 in EEOC Disability and Age Discrimination Lawsuit.
A Nonprofit Settles a Federal Lawsuit Alleging It Fired an older worker while she was on Medical Leave and replaced her with younger, Less-Qualified Employees.
WASHINGTON (STL.News) Northern Virginia Surgery Center, LLC (NVSC), which operates an outpatient surgery center, will pay $50,000 and provide programmatic relief to resolve a disability and age discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced on January 13, 2025.
According to the lawsuit, when an older radiologic technologist requested an extension of her medical leave to recover from carpel tunnel surgery, NVSC terminated her and replaced her with two significantly younger and less qualified co-workers. The termination and replacement occurred while the employee was still on approved medical leave, the EEOC said.
Such conduct violates the Age Discrimination Employment Act (ADEA), which protects employees 40 years of age and older from discrimination on the basis of age, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities if doing so would not pose an undue hardship. The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. Northern Virginia Surgery Center, LLC, Case No. 1:24-cv-1721) in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia after first attempting to reach a voluntary pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.
In addition to the monetary relief Northern Virginia Surgery Center (NVSC) must provide the charging party, the two-year consent decree that settles the suit requires the company to revise its policies on the ADA and ADEA, provide training to its management on the ADA and ADEA, educate its nonmanagerial employees on its ADA and ADEA policies and make reports to the EEOC of complaints of disability or age discrimination.
“We are pleased the parties were able to negotiate a resolution early in the litigation process,” said EEOC Philadelphia Regional Attorney Debra M. Lawrence. “This agreement will provide relief to the injured party and ensure that NVSC’s employees have access to reasonable accommodations, such as medical leave, moving forward.”
Mindy Weinstein, director of the EEOC’s Washington Field Office, said, “This lawsuit demonstrates the importance of safeguarding the rights of older workers, especially when they need medical leave as a reasonable accommodation to deal with a chronic medical condition.”
