May 06, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

Georgetown University’s computer services department allegedly violated the D.C. Human Rights Act by giving an unfair advantage to good-looking young men in its hiring and promotion practices before it eliminated the jobs of older, mostly female employees in a 2003 staff downsizing move, according to a lawsuit filed last week in D.C. Superior Court.

Two former employees at the university’s Information Systems Department who are heterosexual allege in a lawsuit filed on April 22 that the department engaged in discrimination based on their gender, age, and sexual orientation when it eliminated their jobs as well as the jobs of at least 19 others in a staff layoff.

Mindy Hicks and Emilya Nudelman, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, allege that the director and assistant director of the university’s Information Services Department — both of whom are identified in the suit as gay men — demonstrated favoritism toward young attractive men in the hiring process, job assignments, and training opportunities in the department.”

The suit does not state whether the “young attractive men” who reportedly received favored treatment were gay or straight.

Julie Green Bataille, a spokesperson for Georgetown University, said the university opposes discrimination in all forms and strongly disputes claims that the layoffs were based on bias.

“Georgetown had legitimate and non-discriminatory reasons for conducting the layoffs in our university Information Services Department that occurred more than two years ago,” Bataille said. “We will vigorously defend ourselves against these allegations in a court of law.”

She said the university has a policy of not commenting on specific details of pending litigation.

Ties to Catholic Church
The lawsuit’s allegation that Georgetown, a Jesuit-run university linked to the Catholic Church, engaged in bias in favor of gays or employees perceived as gay comes at a time when newly installed Pope Benedict XVI is expected to continue the Vatican’s strong opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage.

The Order of Jesuits, a Catholic organization, operates Georgetown University as an institution independent of the church. However, church officials serve on the university’s board of trustees and play a role in setting its policies, university spokesperson Bataille said.

In the 1980s, the D.C. Commission on Human Rights ruled that Georgetown University violated the city’s Human Rights Act when it denied official university recognition of two gay student groups. The ruling prompted Congress to pass a law known as the Armstrong Amendment that overturned the ruling by carving an exemption in the Human Rights Act for religious institutions in the area of public accommodations in connection with recognition or meeting space for homosexual organizations.

Cornelius Alexander, legal counsel for the D.C. Commission on Human Rights, said the Armstrong amendment would not interfere with Hicks and Nudelman’s lawsuit because it is limited to the act’s public accommodation clause and does not pertain to employment discrimination.

S. Micah Salb, the attorney representing Hicks and Nudelman, is himself gay and served last year as co-chair of GAYLAW, a D.C. area gay lawyers group.
Salb said his clients’ decision to file the suit at the present time had nothing to do with the current developments in the Catholic Church.

He said the three-year delay in filing the suit was due to protracted and ultimately unsuccessful negotiations between the two women and the university over a possible out-of-court settlement. Salb said the university agreed to sign a waiver releasing the women from a statute of limitation that ordinarily requires that lawsuits be filed within one year of alleged grievances.

“The issue at hand is discrimination and whether the university engaged in practices that violate the law,” he said.

Salb said nearly all of his past clients in sexual orientation discrimination cases have been gay and have challenged allegations of anti-gay discrimination.

“But by the same token, we in the gay community should not engage in the conduct that we criticize others for engaging in,” he said.

trong>S. Micah Salb, a gay lawyer, is representing two women who allege gay supervisors at Georgetown discriminated against his heterosexual female clients and showed favoritism to attractive younger men.

The lawsuit states that sexual orientation, gender and age played a role in the decisions that led to the 2003 layoff of Hicks and Nudelman as well as others in the ...