FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A veteran social worker who says she was fired for expressing concern over racial harassment against her as a Jewish woman and political harassment over her ties to the Trump administration is suing for wrongful termination.
Tammy Weitzman last week sued her former employer, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, now known as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, for racial and political discrimination and for retaliating against her when she spoke up about it.
“I was called a white k–e, and I was harassed over knowing a high-ranking Cabinet member in the Trump administration,” Weitzman told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview, using an offensive term for Jewish individuals.
She had helped care for a daughter of the Trump administration official, Weitzman said.
The leader of the group legally representing Weitzman, Coalition for Liberty President Doug Turpin, recounted how the Seattle cancer center responded when his client expressed concern to her boss about the harassment. Weitzman herself, not those harassing her, ended up in hot water. The cancer center forced her to take “racial equity” training.
When Weitzman later spoke about her experiences facing harassment as a Jewish woman, the “equity” facilitators told her that she was white.
According to the lawsuit, Weitzman’s coworkers often sent her unsolicited emails condemning the Trump administration and blaming her for Trump’s policies. When she reported the harassment, the suit says, the director of the center’s human resources office told her to simply “deal with it” and warned her that she likely would face retaliation if she filed a formal complaint.
Weitzman worked as an oncology social worker, providing counseling and therapy services for cancer patients and their families.
“While other folks on the team were able to ensure that these patients had enough resources, a place to stay, and gas money to get to the clinic, my role was very clinical,” Weitzman told The Daily Signal.
Weitzman said she had wanted to work with cancer patients since her childhood because her father died of cancer when she was 5. Until her firing, she told The Daily Signal, she had been a social worker specializing in cancer patients for “almost 23 years.”
Weitzman worked at the Seattle cancer center from January 2016 to February 2021, receiving a raise and many favorable commendations for her work, but got fired abruptly Feb. 5.
Other employees repeatedly used racial slurs against her, and her supervisors ignored them or “told me [it] was no big deal,” she recalled.
An Anti-Trump Article
Nidhi Berry, who supervised “Race and Allyship” training sessions at the Seattle cancer center, had sent an anti-Trump article as a follow-up to a racial sensitivity training that Jan. 21, the day after Joe Biden became president, according to the lawsuit. That article made generalizations about Jewish people that Weitzman found offensive.
Weitzman told The Daily Signal that the article contained instructions to lecture those around her, including her cancer patients, about Trump. She said Berry asked her to use the article “to talk about racism with patients and families.”
The social worker found that highly unethical, she said, not in the least because such political posturing isn’t remotely of interest to cancer patients:
They’re concerned about their lives. Caring for cancer patients, receiving cancer treatment, working in a cancer hospital, working in any cancer facility or any medical institution should be an apolitical matter. Period. End of story.
I should not be compelled to talk to patients about politics and about President Trump and how evil the Left thinks that he is. This is wrong—and yet this is happening everywhere.
When Weitzman complained about the article to Tiffany Courtnage, her direct boss, Courtnage told her to bring up the issue directly with Berry. Weitzman objected to that approach, but ultimately followed that instruction from her boss and spoke over the phone with Berry on Jan. 21.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/23/exclusive-jewish-cancer-counselor-sues-former-employer-racial-slurs-white-privilege-claims-retaliation/