Catholic Healthcare West (CHW)—which owns Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria and dozens of other hospitals throughout the nation—has agreed to a landmark settlement in a lawsuit alleging it imposed discriminatory hurdles to employment for immigrant job-seekers.
The Department of Justice announced on Oct. 19 that the hospital provider—the eighth largest in the nation—agreed to pay $257,000 in civil penalties and $1,000 in back pay to the charging party.
The settlement is the largest ever paid in compensation for such a lawsuit.
According to the DOJ’s findings, CHW violated the Immigration and Nationality Act when it required its non-U.S. and naturalized U.S. citizen employees to provide more work authorization documents than required by federal law, while allowing people born in the United States to choose what documents to provide.
The Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits employers from imposing different or greater employment eligibility verification standards on the basis of a potential worker’s citizenship status.
“All workers who are authorized to work in the United States have the right to look for a job without encountering discrimination because of their immigration status or national origin,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a press release.
The California-based, not-for-profit corporation also issued a statement: “CHW has cooperated fully in the development of this settlement agreement with the Department of Justice. CHW has implemented system-wide training to address the concerns raised by the DOJ. We are in the process of reviewing and updating our hiring policies and procedures to ensure that such concerns do not arise in the future.”
CHW operates facilities in California, Nevada, and Arizona, including Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria, French Hospital in San Luis Obispo, and Arroyo Grande Community Hospital.
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 4, 2010.