Ex-worker sues Salvation Army

A former Salvation Army employee claims in a federal lawsuit that the charity’s Spokane chapter discriminated against her because of her disability.

Donna Flint, 50, who worked for the Salvation Army’s Spokane office, 222 E. Indiana, for seven years, said the nonprofit corporation violated her rights by not restoring her to her previous supervisory position after she took a medical leave.

She also said in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane, that her boss disclosed to her co-workers that she had hepatitis.

The Salvation Army has formally denied Flint’s charges, but a Salvation Army official declined on Wednesday to comment on the case.

In October 2005, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that Flint had been harassed at work because of her disability and that her medical information had been unlawfully disclosed. The EEOC did not, however, find evidence that she was passed over because of her disability.

Flint’s attorney, Donna Beatty, claims in the lawsuit that her client’s rights were violated under the federal Family Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disability Act and state and federal medical privacy laws.

Flint said she began working for the charity as a bookkeeper in 1997 after undergoing Salvation Army rehabilitation for drug addiction the previous year. In 2001, she was promoted to finance and accounting manager.

Her employment troubles began in 2003, Flint said, after disclosing to Maj. Ben Markham, then-director of the Salvation Army’s Spokane office, that she had been diagnosed with hepatitis C.

Markham, the lawsuit contends, would comment on Flint’s illness “every time they met, and indicated to her that her health precluded her from being converted to a salaried employee.”

Flint said Markham also disclosed her illness to co-workers with whom she had not shared her diagnosis, and said he suggested it was her own fault she was ill because of her previous drug addiction.

“I felt it was a moral judgment,” Flint said of Markham’s comment.

Largely because of the stress of “Major Markham’s constant harassment,” Flint was forced to take a medical leave of absence, according to the lawsuit.

She returned to work in May 2004 to find that her department had been restructured. A new manager had assumed Flint’s duties and office, and Flint had been consigned to an out-of-the way area without even a working phone, according to the lawsuit.

“I had been there long enough to recognize what they do when they want to get rid of an employee,” Flint said. “I felt I was being hung out to dry.”

She said she was systematically discredited, harassed and isolated at work. Because of the resulting stress, and under her doctor’s advice, Flint left work in June 2004, never to return.

Her lawsuit seeks lost wages and benefits, as well as punitive damages and injunctive relief. Senior U.S. Judge Alan A. McDonald has been scheduled to try the case in Yakima in October.