Muslim woman's towel is ripped off head. Awarded $5 million

[Pyrodox11]

http://news.yahoo.com/t-pay-muslim-w...--finance.html

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A former Kansas City woman who converted to Islam in 2005 said she was harassed for years at AT&T, and that the abuse boiled over in 2008 when her boss snatched her head scarf and exposed her hair.

A Jackson County jury on Thursday awarded Susann Bashir $5 million in punitive damages in her discrimination lawsuit, along with $120,000 in lost wages and other actual damages.

The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/JKWbqR ) reported Saturday the award appears to be the largest jury verdict for a workplace discrimination case in Missouri history.

Bashir said in court documents that her work environment became hostile immediately after she converted, with her co-workers making harassing comments about her religion and referring to her hijab as "that thing on her head."

"I was shocked. I thought, 'What is going on?'" she told the newspaper. "Nobody ever cared what I wore before. Nobody ever cared what religion I was before."

Bashir worked at AT&T's office in Kansas City for 10 years as a fiber optics network builder before being fired from her $70,000-a-year job. She claimed she endured religious discrimination nearly every day of the final three years she worked there, including being asked if she was going to blow up the building and being called a "towelhead" and a terrorist.

AT&T said Friday it disagrees with the verdict and plans to appeal.

Despite the jury's award, Bashir stands to receive much less than $5 million because Missouri law caps such awards at five times the actual damage amount, plus attorney fees.

Amy Coopman, Bashir's lawyer, said attorney fees will be determined later by the judge.

The previous largest such verdict came in 2009, when Mohamed Alhalabi, an Arab-American Muslim, was awarded $811,949 in St. Louis County Circuit Court in a case against the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

That same year, a Jonesboro, Ark., jury ordered AT&T to pay $1.3 million to two former employees fired for attending a Jehovah's Witnesses convention.

Bashir said she called an employee help line in March 2005 and asked the company to provide sensitivity training for her co-workers.

"It was a worthless call," she said. "Nothing ever changed."

The harassment continued and in March 2008, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched an investigation after she filed a complaint.

She said that made some workers angry and led to the final encounter with her boss.

Bashir said she became so stressed out that she couldn't return to work. She asked that her boss be removed or that she be transferred, but neither happened.

She was fired after not returning to work for nine months.

"By firing me, they stole my ability to work at a job I liked," Bashir said.

She said the incident was hard on her mentally and physically and tore her family apart. She is going through a divorce, and in October she and her daughter moved to Anchorage, Alaska, where she works as an apartment manager.

"I have mixed feelings," Bashir said. "I'm happy not to be reporting to that management structure. But it's hard in this economy to find a job with that level of compensation. I didn't want to lose my job, because I felt I was doing good work."

[OliverClozov]

wasnt Kansas City the first airport to install foot washing things for them also?

[eMaaZe]

wow thats crazy 5 million dollars. I really want to go out and sue someone now. SIKE

[pidginduck]

She was fired after not returning to work for nine months.

"By firing me, they stole my ability to work at a job I liked," Bashir said.

Lolwut? they gave her NINE MONTHS of absence

[speaklowmanlet]

Get it how you can.

[Lowlander]

Glad she was to annoy everyone.

[YalCantTouchDis]

120k in 9 months she was making? Dang.

[Metalhead44]

America,the land of religious freedom....?

The monetary reward was extremely gross,but if you play with fire you'll get burned.


-Atheist

[heybigboy5]

[Smau5]

Pretty disrespectful to the woman. Glad she won her case, regardless of the $$.

[Pyrodox11]

Pretty disrespectful to the woman. Glad she won her case, regardless of the $$.

Disrespectful.. absolutely. Did this warrant this woman to be absurdly rich and have more than 99% of HARD WORKING Americans will ever earn in their entire lives? I'll leave you to answer that one.

[OliverClozov]

Pretty disrespectful to the woman. Glad she won her case, regardless of the $$.

5 million dollars disrespectful? give me a break. Legal lottery /thread. this world is fukked

[dmc90]

thats a man, baby

[shempskidd]

Pretty disrespectful to the woman. Glad she won her case, regardless of the $$.

This.

[Shak3401]

Disrespectful.. absolutely. Did this warrant this woman to be absurdly rich and have more than 99% of HARD WORKING Americans will ever earn in their entire lives? I'll leave you to answer that one.

Tons and tons of people in America get absurdly rich for not doing anything

[shempskidd]

5 million dollars disrespectful? give me a break. Legal lottery /thread. this world is fukked

I'm going to guess your also one of those people that say criminals don't get harsh enough penalties, aka a hypocrite.

[Pyrodox11]

Tons and tons of people in America get absurdly rich for not doing anything

Give me an example of an easier way to make $5 million than this one.

[OliverClozov]

the needs of few do not outweigh the needs of many.

[DiseasedScrotum]

Good for her. Not a single phuck was given. This was a private action (I thinks thats the right word). But anyways....sorry you do not have the right to cross someone's physical boundaries.

[OliverClozov]

Give me an example of an easier way to make $5 million than this one.

lottery. thats about it.

[fofm]

mind = blown at how nasty, and inconsiderate some ppl can be... especially to your co-workers... in my 2 years at university, I HAVENT SEEN anyone... behave like this... even at the immature post-high school age... but to have ****in grown ass men and women do this?... speechless

[epicstory]

Disrespectful.. absolutely. Did this warrant this woman to be absurdly rich and have more than 99% of HARD WORKING Americans will ever earn in their entire lives? I'll leave you to answer that one.

u mad brah

[BeastMode101]

damn that's a lot of money, but hell if the boss and the people were giving her a hard time for her own religious beliefs then she deserved to get that compensation.

don't know why religious people are always getting harassed.

[AMERICAN_BEAST]

this is not worth 5 million dollars


edit: how can you guys agree with this? - freakin 5 million dollars? isthisreallife

[Molec]

LOL she looks like peter griffin's sister or something

But this is good. Good to know Muslims too can take advantage of the silly litigious nature of American society. Now she ballin, can go to Mecca as many times as she wants without relying on airmiles, etc.

[sydneyalysse]

time to convert to islam

[BTTB3]

Disrespectful.. absolutely. Did this warrant this woman to be absurdly rich and have more than 99% of HARD WORKING Americans will ever earn in their entire lives? I'll leave you to answer that one.

I'm not 100% about this, but pretty confident. The reason its such a large amount of money because its AT&T. If some random joe blow did this who operated a small shop in a rural town, the lady would have been awarded perhaps $100k.

You really think that AT&T losing $100k is going to matter? If it was like that, they would continue doing what they are doing since $100k is chump change. You need the punishment to be a deterrent so they wouldn't do it again. Otherwise, they would continue to screw people over since there is no consequence. Obviously the deterrent is needed since "That same year, a Jonesboro, Ark., jury ordered AT&T to pay $1.3 million to two former employees fired for attending a Jehovah's Witnesses convention".

If we were to be real tea, she doesn't deserve $5m. But at the end of the day, its a big corporation that doesn't give a phuck about its customers/employees that is losing money.

[shempskidd]

Disrespectful.. absolutely. Did this warrant this woman to be absurdly rich and have more than 99% of HARD WORKING Americans will ever earn in their entire lives? I'll leave you to answer that one.

So you're glad that she won her case and agree that she was disrespected, but your issue was that the perpetrator of the disrespect, while being punished, made it so that someone besides yourself get rich? At least this woman deserved some of that money through the hardship she endured at work and in court, unlike lottery winners that become multimillionaires through a $2 guess. Then again, no one has an issue with lotto winners.

[shempskidd]

the needs of few do not outweigh the needs of many.

...and what the f*ck is that vague statement supposed to indicate?

[bigben2121]

rage achieved