A former employee in the registrar’s office at the Morehouse School of Medicine is preparing to file a discrimination complaint with Atlanta’s Human Relations Commission, charging her bosses with firing her because she is a lesbian.
Ashland Johnson, 23, who processed student transcripts and enrollment verification at the Morehouse School of Medicine since July 2005, was fired Aug. 28. Her termination letter from the school’s human resources department alleged her “failure to consistently meet the performance and attendance standards” of her job.
But Johnson said there were no complaints about the quality of her performance until she missed work due to a back injury this past July, during which Johnson’s supervisor discovered an e-mail from her lesbian partner on her computer.
“I came back to work and she told me she accessed my files,” Johnson said of her supervisor, Morehouse School of Medicine Registrar Karen A. Lewis.
“I noticed a difference as soon as I came back,” Johnson continued. “[Lewis] said, ‘I’ve been on your computer, I’ve seen your documents, and I think you would be better-suited to work in another department.’”
Following her return work, Johnson and Lewis traded numerous e-mails and memos, with Johnson repeatedly requesting a transfer to another department and Lewis highlighting what she considered deficiencies in Johnson’s work performance.
The ACLU of Georgia is assisting Johnson as she prepares the paperwork for her complaint with the city of Atlanta, and plans to represent her during a hearing with the Human Relations Commission, said Beth Littrell, associate legal director of the ACLU of Georgia. The Human Relations Commission is a seven-member
citizen panel charged with enforcing the city’s anti-bias ordinance, which prohibits discrimination in areas such as employment and housing on the basis of sexual orientation, among other categories.
Johnson is also using internal routes within the Morehouse School of Medicine to appeal her firing, but said she has not been given a timeline for when the appeal will take place.
The Morehouse School of Medicine is a private, historically black two-year medical school that was created within Morehouse College in 1973. Two years later, the Morehouse School of Medicine became an independent institution, and it currently is not affiliated in any way with Morehouse College, according to Gayle Converse, a communications officer for the Morehouse School of Medicine.
Lewis declined to comment on Johnson’s allegations of discrimination.
‘Outside activities’ prompt dismissal?
Prior to the July incident when Lewis accessed Johnson’s computer, Johnson said the two women “got along very well.” They exchanged Christmas gifts, and Johnson went to see a couple of movies with Lewis’s son, Johnson said.
Despite the friendly relationship, Johnson said she was too fearful to tell Lewis about her sexual orientation.
“I knew to keep it under wraps,” said Johnson, who was aware that Lewis attended a strict Pentecostal church. “One time she made a comment about Hurricane Katrina in front of me — that it was a result of people’s lifestyles.”
Johnson missed two days of work in early July after throwing out her back, and upon returning to work she was locked out of her computer work station and had her office keys taken away, according to memos and e-mails exchanged between Johnson and Lewis.
In those exchanges, Lewis claims that while Johnson was out of the office, the registrar’s office received a 33-page non-work related fax requesting Johnson to proofread a document.
“I felt that outside activities such as this may be contributing to your problems,” Lewis wrote in a July 17 memo. “As your supervisor, I felt it was within the scope of my authority to investigate further. I chose to log on to the front desk computer … and quickly identified a large number of documents that were obviously personal given their titles.”
The documents on Johnson’s computer indicated she was looking for a new job, and using Morehouse School of Medicine equipment to do personal freelance work, Lewis wrote. Lewis never mentions discovering a letter from Johnson’s girlfriend in any of the exchanges.
But Johnson said Lewis was long aware that she did freelance proofreading, and she disputes using school equipment for outside work. Lewis’s accusations of being dissatisfied with Johnson’s work performance were merely attempts to provide cover for an unjust firing, Johnson and Littrell charged.
“In any employment discrimination case it’s not unusual for employers or supervisors to try to mask their prejudice, or create reasons for the termination that look legitimate in hindsight,” Littrell said.
In a written rebuttal to Lewis’s charges against her, Johnson noted that before the July incident, Lewis “made no mention to me that my work was lacking in any area … [and] prior to her reading my files, I was commended on my work performance.”
But that same rebuttal includes indicators that Lewis made earlier complaints. In the memo, Johnson notes that she has made “every adjustment Mrs. Lewis has asked me to make,” including wearing bigger clothes to keep her skin from showing while sitting in her chair. Johnson also wrote that she had gotten better with contacting Lewis as soon as she knew she would be late to or absent from work, while increasing her productivity and decreasing filing errors.
HRC authority remains untested
Johnson faces an uphill battle in seeking justice through the Human Relations Commission, which has dismissed a series of gay and lesbian employment discrimination complaints. In its first ever discrimination hearing in 2004, the commission sided with a lesbian and gay man who claimed the Druid Hills Golf Club discriminated against them by not offering spousal benefits to their domestic partners.
The commission recommended Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin revoke the golf club’s liquor license, but after months of maneuvering — including an abandoned lawsuit — Franklin backed off punishing the club, leaving the legitimacy of the Human Relations Commission lingering and untested.
“We’re hopeful that the Atlanta Human Relations Commission will rise to its responsibility to properly investigate claims, and if the allegations are found to be true that they will take some action that can send a message to employers that discrimination based o
